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WASHINGTON (CNN) -

An unlikely ally is offering a glimmer of hope that President Barack Obama can make good on his vow to close Guantanamo Bay before leaving office.

Republican Sen. John McCain, a fierce critic of Obama's foreign policy, is about to take the chairmanship of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee. He says it's still possible the war on terror camp in Cuba could be shut down -- but warns that the administration will have to come up with a clear plan to overcome Republican opposition.

Asked in a CNN interview whether he was prepared to help his old political foe, despite a congressional ban on sending detainees to the U.S. mainland, McCain said, "I am prepared to and I think it can be done."

But he warned that ever since he started talking to the administration about Guantanamo Bay in 2009, it had "never come forward with a plan as to how we treat those individuals that have been judged as too dangerous to ever be released, and that is the hangup."

McCain, himself a former prisoner of war, has long favored closing Guantanamo Bay, which critics say stains the reputation of the United States and is a recruiting tool for terrorists. But key players in Congress, including many senior Republicans, have barred funding for the administration to send remaining inmates elsewhere or to build facilities on the U.S. mainland.

Speculation about the camp's future is being stoked by the recent transfers of a group of prisoners to Uruguay last week. The U.S. response to the 9/11 attacks in 2001 is also back in the spotlight because of the recent release of a Senate report on enhanced interrogation tactics critics say equate to torture.

McCain said he thought that Republican opposition could be overcome, if the administration laid out exactly how it believed it could close Guantanamo.

"If I went to the members of the committee today and said, 'Look they are going to be moved to a maximum security prison in some location in the United States of America and we have a plan for that transfer, I think most of them would be perfectly happy about that," McCain said.

Last weekend, the Obama administration sent six Guantanamo Bay detainees to Uruguay for resettlement as refugees as part of its plan to depopulate the camp prior to its closure.

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Republican opposition can be overcome, McCain says