The Uighurs -- members of a Muslim, Turkic-speaking minority -- were captured in Afghanistan and have since been cleared by Washington of "war on terror" allegations, but they fear torture if they return home.

Beijing regards the men as "Chinese terrorists."

By a two to one vote, a three-judge panel of a US appeals court ruled Wednesday that a federal judge does not have authority to decide who can legally enter the United States, a power they said resides only with the president or Congress.

The court struck down an October 8 ruling by US District Judge Ricardo Urbina who ordered the federal government to free the 17 men in the Washington area where there is a large Uighur community.

"We are certain that no habeas corpus court since the time of Edward I ever ordered such an extraordinary remedy," wrote senior Circuit Court Judge Raymond Randolph.

The Uighurs have been imprisoned at the US detention center at Guantanamo for six years, even though they were cleared two years ago of being "enemy combatants."

US President Barack Obama plans to shut down by early 2010 the detention camp in Cuba, which became a symbol of perceived excess in the "war on terror" under his predecessor George W. Bush.

The court decision led Beijing to reiterate its call for the Uighurs' repatriation.

"We think that the Chinese terrorist subjects held in Guantanamo Bay should be handed over to China to be dealt with in accordance with the law," foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said.

"These suspects are members of the East Turkestan terrorist organisation," she said, referring to a group that Beijing accuses of seeking an independent homeland in the Uighur-populated Xinjiang region.

Jiang said the issue may be brought up during US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to China which begins Friday.

Leading Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer, who lives in exile in Washington, said she was "disappointed" by the court decision.

"But I hope that the Obama administration still consider releasing and resettling the Uighur detainees at Guantanamo in the US," she said.

Jameel Jaffer, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's National Security Project, denounced the court move as a throwback to the Bush era.

"This decision only underscores how important it is that the Obama administration act quickly to dismantle the Bush administration's misguided national security policies and to close Guantanamo altogether," he said.

The United States has been struggling to find a third country to take the 17 Uighurs.

China's foreign ministry earlier this month warned Canada not to accept three of them seeking asylum, saying Beijing was "opposed to any country accepting those people."

The German city of Munich, which like Washington is home to a major Uighur community, has offered to take in the men, but Chancellor Angela Merkel's cross-party government is divided on taking inmates from Guantanamo.

The Obama administration said last month it "cannot imagine" sending the inmates to China, saying they could be mistreated.

In response, the Uighurs' lawyers urged their release into the Washington area, saying that the United States was the only nation where they could go and that the decision would encourage other countries to accept inmates.

But the Washington federal appeals court rejected the argument that the Uighurs deserve to be released into the United States "after all they have endured at the hands of the US."

"Such sentiments, however highminded, do not represent a legal basis for upsetting settled law and overriding the prerogatives of political branches," Randolph wrote.

Randolph argued that the court "has, without exception, sustained the exclusive power of the political branches to decide which aliens may, and which aliens may not, enter the United States, and on what terms."

European countries have been reluctant to accept Uighur detainees, although Albania welcomed a group of five in 2006.

The Uighurs were living in a self-contained camp in Afghanistan when the US-led bombing campaign began in October 2001. They fled to the mountains, but were turned over to Pakistani authorities, who then handed them over to the United States.

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