Having won the campaign, I think it would be a huge error if the international coalition was to lose the peace

EU Commissioner Chris Patten

Stockholm and Copenhagen are both working to secure access to the two men with a view to providing consular assistance, officials from their respective foreign ministries told BBC News Online, adding that their governments were in negotiation with US authorities.

The Swede, whose identity will not be disclosed, has already been taken to the controversial prison camp at Guantanamo Bay on Cuba, where a Swedish delegation is hoping to visit him next week.

The Danish Foreign Ministry confirmed a Danish national had been arrested in Afghanistan but spokesman Urik Knudsen was unable to say whether he had yet been transported to Camp X-Ray.

It is absolutely necessary that the fight against terrorism is carried out with full respect for international law and human rights

Anna Lindh Swedish Foreign Minister

The US has been airlifting its war captives from Afghanistan to the Cuban base, where their treatment has attracted widespread international concern.

Critics fear that the base is being transformed into a long-term penal colony which will be used to hold any type of terrorism suspect without giving them fair trials, or even access to lawyers.

Rumsfeld: Allegations are "just plain false"

European Union members have joined human rights groups in expressing their anxieties about conditions at the base, calling for the prisoners to be treated according to "the rule of law".

"I do not doubt it is extremely difficult to apply these principles in dealing with the most dangerous men," said the EU's external affairs commissioner Chris Patten.

"But having won the campaign, I think it would be a huge error if the international coalition was to lose the peace."

We are of the view that that, regardless of any later definition of their status, they are to be treated as prisoners-of-war

Germany's Joschka Fischer

Germany has also issued the US with a rare rebuke over the camp, demanding that the prisoners be granted "prisoner-of-war" status and its accompany rights - which Washington has so far refused to do.

"We are of the view that that, regardless of any later definition of their status, they are to be treated as prisoners-of-war. That means in accordance with international law," said Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer in a statement.

Britain, which has so far backed up US assertions that the prisoners are being treated in line with international humanitarian norms, has nonetheless made clear that it will oppose any death penalty ruling against the three Britons currently being held at the base.

"This is absolutely the line that Sweden intends to take too," Swedish foreign ministry spokesman Goesta Grassman told BBC News Online.

"We too will strongly oppose the death penalty."

Defence

The US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has maintained that the treatment of the prisoners is humane, and that to suggest otherwise is "just plain false".

Speaking to reporters in Washington on Tuesday, he defended America's treatment of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, saying: "What's going on down there is responsible, humane, legal, proper and consistent with the Geneva Convention."

Mr Rumsfeld said the detainees had to be restrained to protect US servicemen guarding them, some of whom had been attacked and bitten by the prisoners.

None of the captives had been harmed, the defence secretary said, adding that they were receiving "warm showers, toiletries, water, clean clothes, blankets, regular, culturally appropriate meals, prayer mats, and the right to practice their religions".