China has called on the United States to hand over a group of ethnic Uighurs held at Guantanamo Bay rather than send them to the tiny Pacific nation of Palau, which has offered to resettle them.
The strong reaction from Beijing, which says the 17 Uighurs are members of an Islamic insurgent group operating in far western China, came one day after Palau said it had agreed to take them in temporarily.
The United States should "stop handing over terrorist suspects to any third country," foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters, adding the Uighurs should be sent back to China "at an early date."
"China urges the US to implement the UN Security Council's relevant resolutions and its international obligations on counter-terrorism," he said.
"China also opposes any third country taking these terrorist suspects."
The detainees were part of a group of 22 Uighurs living in a self-contained camp in Afghanistan when the US-led invasion of the country began in October 2001, in the wake of the September 11 attacks.
They said they had fled to Afghanistan to escape persecution in their home region of Xinjiang in western China.
The United States cleared the men of wrongdoing four years ago but they remained at the controversial US-run prison camp in Cuba due to fears they would be tortured if handed to China.
Five of the Uighurs have been resettled in Albania, which was reluctant to accept any more after angering Beijing. The United States tried in vain to get Canada, Australia and Germany to take in some of the remaining 17 Uighurs.
The US Department of Justice announced Thursday that four of the Uighurs had been resettled in Bermuda.
Qin said the Uighur detainees were "members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement" - a group listed by the United Nations and the United States as a terrorist organisation.
"East Turkestan" is what many Muslims call Xinjiang, which borders Central Asia and is home to about 8.3 million Uighurs.
Many members of the mainly Muslim community say they have suffered under Chinese political and religious persecution for decades.
Palau's President Johnson Toribiong said in a statement earlier this week that he was "honoured and proud that the United States has asked Palau to assist with such a critical task."
He described the decision as "a humanitarian gesture intended to help them be freed from any further unnecessary incarceration and to restart their lives anew in as normal fashion as possible."
A senior US official said Wednesday that Washington was still considering Palau's offer and that "no final decision" had been made about the fate of the Uighurs.
Both a spokesman for the US State Department and Toribiong denied that his offer was linked to the finalisation of a 200-million-dollar aid package for Palau.
Palau, which has a population of about 21,000, is one of 23 countries which gives formal diplomatic recognition to Taiwan rather than China.
In October 2008, a federal judge had ordered the Uighurs released in the United States, but that ruling was overturned on appeal in February.
The detainees have been in limbo since the administration of US President Barack Obama asked the US Supreme Court to reject a request by the Uighurs to be released on US soil.
The White House contends that the decision whether to allow aliens to enter the United States rests solely with the political branches of government.
Obama has promised to close down the detention centre by January 2010, and hopes to convince other countries to take in some of the 50 detainees cleared for release.
The Uighurs are held at "Camp Iguana," a special area for detainees cleared for release. They have more freedom and greater privileges than most prisoners, including a recreational space and a library, according to the Pentagon.
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