No final decisions were expected to be reached at the talks between British Attorney General Peter Goldsmith and Pentagon general counsel William Haynes, who will discuss in greater detail US assurances concerning how the cases will be handled, a Pentagon spokesman said.

"The meeting tomorrow will be the details of some of those assurances," said Air Force Major John Smith. "I don't think tomorrow's meeting will be the final meeting where everything will be worked out. There will be at least another."

The Wall Street Journal, citing unnammed officials, reported Monday that two Britons and an Australian subject to trial by military tribunals were expected to plead guilty to war crimes and renounce terrorism in return for a firm release date.

Two alleged former bodyguards of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden were expected to be the first to face an adversarial trial by military commissions, the newspaper said.

Asked about the report, Smith said no plea agreement had been discussed with any of the detainees because none had been charged or assigned defense counsel. But he did not rule out that possibility.

"I'm not going to argue and say that couldn't happen down the road," said Smith.

"(But) talking about those kind of things right now is putting the cart ahead of the horse. We're not looking to plea bargain with anyone until they have a defense counsel,' he said.

"In fact, they can't plea bargain unless someone is represented, and right now no one has been assigned a defense counsel," he said.

President George W. Bush in early July designated six of the estimated 660 Guantanamo detainees as subject to trial by military commissions.

But following a storm of criticism in Britain and Australia, he gave his allies assurances that US military prosecutors would not seek the death penalty against the two British nationals -- Feroz Abbasi, 23, and Mozzam Begg, 35 -- or Australian David Hicks.

Among the assurances given the British were that their nationals could be represented by US civilian lawyers with a British lawyer acting as a legal consultant and that conversations between the detainees and their lawyers would not be monitored.

US military authorities are holding nine Britons at Guantanamo, including Abbassi and Begg.

WAR.WIRE