A former British law chief says the British are to blame for their row with Bermuda over the Uighurs.

Lord Goldsmith, who served as Attorney General under former Prime Minister Tony Blair, made the comments as he criticised the current PM Gordon Brown for undermining US efforts to close Guantánamo Bay.

According to UK newspaper The Independent, he said Mr. Brown and the Foreign Office should do more to provide homes for some of the 223 detainees still held at the US naval base in Cuba.

In one of his first acts as US President, Barack Obama gave himself a year to close the controversial prison, but the US government has encountered setbacks as it sifts through complex cases.

It has also struggled to persuade other countries to take some of the detainees, with only 27 transferred since Mr. Obama came to power in January.

Lord Goldsmith criticised the British Foreign Office for not co-operating over prisoner relocation, forcing the US to negotiate directly with Bermuda to place four detainees here in June a move that sparked tensions between Bermuda and London.

He told The Independent: "The UK should offer to take more of those detainees... More could be done, as illustrated by the recent row over the US negotiations to transfer some to Bermuda. The Foreign Office was upset that the Americans negotiated directly with the Bermuda Government, bypassing the British.

"However, the real point is that if the Foreign Office and the British Government had been more helpful regarding detainee transfers then the US wouldn't have felt that it had to go direct to the Bermudans (sic)."

Bermuda's Premier Ewart Brown incurred the wrath of the British administration when he brought former terror suspects Khalil Mamut, Abilikim Turahun, Abdullah Abdulqadir and Salahidin Abdulahat to the Island on June 11 from the notorious US detention camp without the approval of Britain or his Cabinet.

Governor Sir Richard Gozney and the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office said afterwards that he had no authority to do so, as the matter involved external affairs and was outside the remit of the Bermuda Government.

The four men have been twice cleared of being enemy combatants by US authorities, but the US refused to take them. They have since been given permits enabling them to work as groundsmen at Port Royal Golf Course and are said to be settling well into life on the Island after more than seven years at Guantánamo.