MONTEVIDEO (AFP) - Six Guantanamo inmates being resettled in Uruguay will leave hospital "in a matter of hours" and begin new lives as free men in the South American country, the defence minister said Monday.

The men, who arrived in Uruguay early Sunday in a deal aimed at helping the United States close the notorious military prison, underwent medical exams on arrival. "That's the only reason they're not walking around the streets of Montevideo today like any neighbor's son," Defence Minister Fernandez Huidobro told local radio station Carve.