ATHENS, Ga. Diplomats: Close prison

Five former U.S. secretaries of state on Thursday urged the next presidential administration to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and open a dialogue with Iran.

The former chiefs of American diplomacy, who served in Democratic and Republican administrations, reached a consensus on the two issues at a conference aimed at giving the next president some bipartisan foreign policy advice. Each of them said shuttering the prison camp in Cuba would bolster America's image.

"It says to the world: 'We are now going back to our traditional respective forms of dealing with people who potentially committed crimes,"' said Colin Powell, who served as President Bush's first secretary of state.

Powell was joined by Henry Kissinger, James Baker III, Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright, in a round-table discussion sponsored by the University of Georgia.