Dubai, 19th Nov. 2008 -- The infamous US prison in Cuba, Guantanamo Bay, had never been a huge campaign issue for Barack Obama, the incoming US president, a UAE daily paper commented.

''It was not at least the most important issue of the campaign for the Democratic presidential candidate. There were far more serious issues like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and of course the bigger issue of current economic mess at home,'' wrote Khaleej Times in its editorial.

''Which is why Obama deserves kudos for vowing to close down the prison in Cuba as he had promised in the run up to the presidential election. In his first ever television interview with CBS's Steve Kroft for 60 Minutes after his landmark election earlier this month, Obama reaffirmed that he remains committed to closure of the prison in Cuba after he takes over from George W Bush on January 20,'' the Dubai-based paper said.

''There is no doubt that few issues have damaged America's reputation and moral standing around the world as Guantanamo Bay gulag and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq have.

''While the Bush administration responded to the scandal of abuse of Iraqi inmates at the Abu Ghraib prison that shocked and outraged the whole world including the Americans by releasing most prisoners, it hasn't been the case with the Guantanamo Bay,' the paper indicated.

''In the face of pressure from the media, human rights groups, the United Nations and even former presidents like Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, the administration has refused to shut down the Bay prison. At one time, President Bush acknowledged the global pressure saying he would like to close the Gitmo but couldn't. "There are dangerous men out there," was the lame argument he offered in his defence.

''However, as the New York Times and Washington Post, two of the biggest names in the US establishment, concluded after their investigation, most of those "dangerous men" held at the Bay for nearly seven years are innocents who were captured and sold to the Americans for a fistful of dollars by booty hunters in the lawless territory along the Pak-Afghan border and elsewhere.

''Even if those men are indeed dangerous, as the administration claims, why are they not tried for their crimes in proper US courts under the US law? There are hundreds of prisoners out there and only a couple of them have been tried on terrorism charges by military tribunals. They have even been denied the basic rights prisoners of war are granted under the Geneva Conventions.

''The president-elect Barack Obama, therefore, deserves the civilised world's gratitude for taking the initiative to shut the Bay and try the prisoners either in US courts or send them to their home countries.

This, the paper added, is the course of action the US Supreme Court had suggested when some human rights lawyers had approached it. Of course, the closure of Gitmo will not bring back the long years those men lost behind the bars. But it might at least, as Obama argues, restore America's moral stature in the world. (WAM/TF)