WASHINGTON, Nov.1 (Xinhuanet) -- US Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday maintained the US policy of barring United Nations representatives from accessing detainees in the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

    Speaking at a Pentagon news conference, Rumsfeld said it is not"appropriate" to give UN personnel the same extensive access at Guantanamo that has been granted to Red Cross officials.

    "There has to be a limit," Rumsfeld said, stressing that denying UN officials the full access to Guantanamo is a US government policy.

    He was referring to the specific case in which three UN expertswere invited last week to visit Guantanamo but were told that they could not interview the detainees.

    The UN experts argued that it will make no sense for such a visit if their access to the prisoners is denied.

    Many of the nearly 500 prisoners at Guantanamo have been detained for over three and a half years without charge or access to lawyers.

    Most of them were captured in the Afghanistan war of 2001, suspected of ties to the al Qaeda network or the Taliban regime.

    Earlier this year, a US Army internal investigation found there were plenty of incidents of abuses in the detention facility.

    Some 200 detainees have been staging a hunger strike in rotation since August protesting their indefinite detention without a trial.

    US media reports said a detainee from Bahrain tried to commit suicide last month during a break from a meeting with his attorney.

    According to the reports, there have been 36 suicide attempts by 22 prisoners since the US military began taking prisoners to Guantanamo in early 2002. Enditem