White House: Obama to make good on Guantánamo pledge

President Barack Obama will make good on a promise to close the U.S. prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, his chief of staff, Denis McDonough, said on "Fox News Sunday."

Obama will present a long-awaited plan to how to close the facility to Congress and seek its approval, McDonough said in an interview. If Congress fails to act, the White House will determine what steps to take, he said.

"He feels an obligation to the next president. He will fix this so that they don't have to be confronted with the same set of challenges," McDonough said.

Obama pledged during the 2008 presidential election campaign that he would close the military prison, which began holding foreign terrorism suspects after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

That pledge, still unfulfilled, has been a feature of his annual State of the Union addresses to the nation ever since.

Obama has said the facility has been used as a recruiting tool in propaganda from groups like Al-Qaeda and is far too costly to maintain. There are 104 detainees left at the prison.

Where possible, his administration has transferred detainees to other countries. But there are a few detainees who, the administration says, it would like to detain in a U.S. facility for national security reasons.

Congress has explicitly barred the transfer of detainees to facilities in the United States.

McDonough declined to say whether Obama would close the prison using executive powers if Congress rejects his plan. "I'm not an if-then guy," he said.

Wire services