The United States has agreed to return to France the last three French detainees held at the US Naval base at Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba.
The French Foreign Ministry, however, said talk of a deal was premature.
French judicial officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the agreement was reached to coincide with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's visit to Paris for yesterday's talks with President Jacques Chirac.
The date of the handover of Mustaq Ali Patel, Ridouane Khalid and Khaled Ben Mustafa has not been fixed, but their return is expected soon, the judicial officials said.
"Things are headed in the right direction, and we are now discussing the details," said William Bourdon, an attorney for Ali Patel, who has both French and Indian nationality.
The judicial officials said the three were expected to go before French judges, and they could be held pending investigation under the preliminary charge of "criminal association with a terrorist enterprise" - a charge often used in such cases in France.
Khalid's brothers, Djamel and Zinedine, are already being investigated in France on suspicion of involvement in the robbery of more than $1.28 million to finance terrorism. Zinedine Khalid also is being investigated in a separate investigation into suspected Chechen terrorism.
Judicial officials said Patel's case could present problems, because he does not appear to have links with Islamic militants and was thought to have been in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region for business reasons when he was detained.
Four other French citizens once held at Guantanamo were returned to France in late July. Mourad Benchellali, Imad Kanouni, Nizar Sassi and Brahim Yadel are being held in France as part of an investigation into suspected terror-related networks.
They were captured in the US-led campaign that toppled the hard-line Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Each spent more than two years at Guantanamo, and French authorities had struggled for months to secure their return.
Anti-terrorism judges have also placed them under investigation for "criminal association with a terrorist enterprise."
Investigators suspect they frequented groups that planned terror attacks in Europe. Several of the men confessed to training in military camps where they learned to use explosives and weapons, officials said.
Sassi and Benchellali are also under investigation for using false documents. The two are childhood friends who grew up in a tough suburb outside the southeastern city of Lyon and went to Afghanistan together in June 2001 with stolen passports, officials say. They were arrested in December 2001 and brought to Guantanamo.
AP