BERLIN -- Germany is considering taking released inmates from the U.S.-run Guantánamo Bay detention center who refuse or cannot return to their home countries when it finally closes down, officials said Monday.

Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier has asked officials to look into the legal, political and practical aspects of accepting former inmates, ministry spokesman Jens Ploetner said Monday. Steinmeier then plans to discuss the issue with his European Union counterparts at ameeting next month.

The center at a U.S. Navy base in Cuba has attracted widespread international criticism and Chancellor Angela Merkel has long advocated its closure. President-elect Barack Obama has also made closure a priority.

Ploetner said taking released inmates to Germany would need to be discussed with the new Obama administration, which takes office Jan. 20.

Steinmeier ''has made clear that he does not want to see the plan to close Guantánamo fail due to the need to find somewhere for those prisoners who cannot return to their home countries,'' Ploetner told a news conference.

Officials did not specify what the status of the former inmates would be if they were accepted in Germany.

The Pentagon now holds some 250 foreign men at the prison camps, and human rights campaigners have said some 40 to 50 of them could face persecution if they were deported to their home countries.

In one instance, the United States has decided against repatriating 17 Chinese citizens from the Uighur Muslim minority now held at Guantánamo -- for fear the communist government there would torture them.

Merkel's spokesman, Thomas Steg, said Germany would not accept prisoners if conditions were attached. ''One thing is clear, the Americans cannot ask for any special terms -- no other agreements, swaps or other strings attached,'' Steg told reporters.

Last week, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates asked that plans be updated for closing Guantánamo in case Obama requests it soon after taking power.

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