BERLIN, June 19 (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama said on Wednesday he still wanted to close Guantanamo Bay prison but said the plan had been tougher to achieve than he had hoped due to resistance from Congress.
"We cannot have a permanent outpost in which they are being held even as we are ending a war in Afghanistan that triggered the capture of some of these detainees in the first place," Obama said at a joint news conference in Berlin with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
"We must not be so driven by fear that we change the fabric of society in ways we don't intend and we do not want for the future. I think closing Guantanamo is an example of us getting out of that perpetual war mentality," Obama said.
He added that the United States was not using Germany as a launching point for unmanned drones as part of efforts to combat terrorism. (Reporting by Jeff Mason and Roberta Rampton)
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