.LONDON (AP) – British lawmakers agreed Thursday to allow a house arrest program for suspected terrorists to continue for another year, but warned the system could begin to resemble Guantánamo Bay unless time limits are introduced.

Legislators voted 267-60 in favor of extending the government’s control orders regime until March 2009. The program is used to monitor suspects who are considered a risk to national security but have not been charged with a criminal offense.

Fifteen people are currently kept under the regime, some of whom have been monitored for three years. They must observe strict curfews, wear an electronic tag, and can be banned from meeting certain individuals or from using cell phones and the Internet.

Home Office minister Tony McNulty said the government needs to use control orders to monitor suspects in cases where law enforcement cannot produce sufficient evidence to lay charges.

McNulty said the control order system was not ideal, but argued that the potential risks posed by some suspects make it necessary.

“The threat is clearly real, serious, and represents a threat unparalleled in our country’s history,” McNulty told lawmakers.

Some lawmakers have called on the government to set a limit on how long a suspect can be made the subject of a control order. Alex Carlile, the government’s terror laws ombudsman, said Monday no control order should be extended beyond two years “save in genuinely exceptional circumstances.”

Andrew Dismore, a lawmaker with Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s governing Labour Party, said that if suspects are held indefinitely, Britain would “run the risk of creating Guantánamo-style martyrs.”

“Perhaps it is the gilded cage of Acacia Avenue rather than the harshness of a Cuban camp but we have still seen indefinite restrictions on their freedom,” Dismore told the House of Commons.