In this paper we use a training algorithm, MCE (Minimum Classification Error), to improve the performance of a text-independent speaker identification system. The MCE training scheme takes account of possible competing speaker hypotheses and tries to reduce the probability of incorrect hypotheses. Experiments performed on a small set speaker identification task show that the discriminant training method using MCE can reduce identification errors by up to 54% over a baseline system trained using Bayesian adaptation to derive GMM (Gaussian Mixture Models) speaker models from a UBM (Universal Background Model).