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EU to discuss Madrid jitters
18/03/2004 12:41 - (SA)
Brussels - EU interior ministers are to gather on Friday for emergency talks on how to respond to the devastating Madrid bomb blasts, which have revived terrorism jitters worldwide two and a half years after the attacks on the World Trade Centre.
Terrorism has leapt to the top of Europe's agenda after last week's rush-hour train blasts, which killed more than 200 people and injured some 1 500.
The EU's Irish presidency called Friday's talks to prepare the ground for a summit of EU leaders next week likely to be overshadowed by the Madrid attacks.
Spanish Interior minister Angel Acebes, whose government was unexpectedly ousted in elections three days after the massacre, will notably brief his counterparts on the probe into the blasts, with al-Qaeda increasingly in the frame.
The Madrid blasts have triggered an immediate boost in security across Europe, with attention focussed notably on public transport. Britain, Europe's closest ally over the Iraq war, is notably on high alert.
Specifically the EU's Irish leadership is set to propose measures including:
implementing a "solidarity clause" requiring EU states to come to the aid of a fellow country hit by terrorism
appointing a terrorism "security co-ordinator"
boosting co-operation among EU intelligence services, and
tightening up measures to cut off extremists' funding.
Fears of another terrorist attack have grown everywhere, but nowhere more so than in countries which backed the United States in Iraq. Close US ally Italy has been singled out by one radical Islamic cleric as next on al-Qaeda's list.
Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu called for the Brussels meeting to agree "targeted co-operation between our countries, but also political measures to develop co-operation between Europe and the Arab world."
Germany's interior minister Otto Schily said they should draw up an assessment of the wider threat from Islamic extremists and "co-ordinate how to respond."
Schily complained two days after the Madrid blasts that Spain had not given information fast enough. "We obviously would have preferred to have been informed about certain details at an earlier stage than was the case," he said.
Others have called for Europol, the EU's existing police agency to be beefed up. But sharing intelligence EU-wide is a particularly sensitive issue, notably with big countries like Britain and France. Proposals for a new European-wide intelligence agency are unlikely to win enough support.
"Intelligence services much prefer to work on a bilateral basis," said Daniel Keohane, a security and defence analyst at the Centre for European Reform in London.
The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, has blasted a "culture of secrecy" among certain EU countries.
"Member states definitely have to learn to trust each other and trust European institutions. Otherwise it's not possible to improve things very rapidly," said commission spokesman Reijo Kemppinen.
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