Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said on Tuesday there was still no official word from the United States on the exact number of Guantanamo detainees which Italy would be asked to accept.
''I don't know if they are three or a different number,'' Frattini told a news conference at the Foreign Press Club in Rome.
Although there has been no official confirmation, reports circulating in Italy said the three slated to be sent to Italy were Tunisians Riadh Nasri, Moez Fezzani and Abdul bin Mohammed bin Ourgy.
Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi told United States President Barack Obama that Italy would take the three detainees when they met at the White House on Monday.
Speaking after the meeting, Obama said he had thanked Berlusconi ''for his support of our policy of closing Guantanamo''.
''This is not just talk. Italy has agreed to accept three specific detainees,'' said Obama
Frattini also said he also understood concerns voiced by Interior Minister Roberto Maroni but stressed that the final decision ''was up to the head of the goverment''.
The minister said Maroni was probably worried about the possibility that the detainees - if not involved in legal procedings in Italy - would be free to travel within the European 25-nation Schengen area, where border controls have been lifted.
But he explained that prior to the detainees' arrival, Italy would warn Schengen group members and would prevent them from travelling to ''any country'' that is not ready to receive them.
Obama wants to close down the prison at the US base in Guantanamo, Cuba, where suspected terrorists, defined as 'enemy combatants', have been held outside the jurisdiction of international law since 2001, when the post-9/11 'war on terror' began.
The American president is convinced the situation at Guantanamo has hurt the international reputation of the US and damaged its image, especially in the Muslim world.
The three reportedly being sent to Italy once resided in Milan and are part of a group which the European Union has agreed to take, while the inmates considered the most dangerous will remain in American hands.
ARREST WARRANTS ISSUED FOR TWO TUNISIANS IN 2007.
Arrest warrants were issued in June 2007 for Nasri and Fezzani for conspiracy to commit a crime, encouraging illegal immigration and a number of crimes linked to terrorism.
They are accused of giving logistical support to a cell in Milan of the Salafi Group Call and Combat (GSPC), which was suspected of recruiting combatants and suicide bombers.
The GSPC was created to overthrow the government in Algeria and set up an Islamic state there. It is now considered to be part of the al Qaeda terrorist network headed by Osama bin Laden and has been renamed al Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb'.
Ourgy is also suspected of having had links in Milan with people who sought volunteers to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan with Islamic insurgents.
According to US military intelligence, an Islamic cultural center on Milan's via Jenner street was actually a recruitment center frequented by the detainees and Fezzani had also used the name Bil Ali Lufti.
While at Guantanamo, he admitted using ''at least 50 different names'' when he was in Italy and that he had some ''minor problems'' with Italian authorities but denied ever killing anyone.
Fezzani, Nasr and Ourgy were said to have frequented the via Jenner center between 1997 and 2001, when Italy did not have a law against international terrorism on its books.
In 2004, four Tunisian nationals were convicted in Milan for their links with the GSPC. The four were given sentences from six and a half years to four years four months for supporting and financing terrorism, aiding illegal immigration, tax fraud and receiving stolen cars.
Judicial sources said the three Tunisians will be sent to a high security AS2 jail once they arrive in Italy, either in the northern city of Parma or Voghera.
The AS2 acronym stands for Alta Sicurezza, secondo livello (High Security, Level 2), a new detention system designed to host international and domestic terrorists.
Prosecutor Stefano D'Ambruoso, a United Nations advisor on terrorism and coordinator of the justice ministry's international affairs office, said the European Union had agreed to accept up to 60 Guantanamo detainees at a meeting in Brussels ten days ago.
He said Germany and France had agreed to take some detainees.
D'Ambruoso confirmed that since the three Tunisians face charges in Italy they will be placed in preventive custody once they arrive.
