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Europeans Urge Swifter Anti-Terror Response

By Mark Trevelyan

WIESBADEN, Germany (Reuters) - European investigators need sharper tools and better intelligence-sharing to be able to intercept suspected terrorists faster, French and German officials said Thursday.

"We must act in real time," French investigating magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere told a terrorism conference in the German city of Wiesbaden.

"Very often it takes much too long for appropriate action to be taken. We must position ourselves so a house search can be carried out within the hour."

Europe has been seeking ways of sharpening anti-terrorism cooperation since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 in the United States, a task made still more urgent after suspected al Qaeda-linked bombers killed 191 people in Madrid in March.

But it has been hampered partly by the reluctance of security services to circulate intelligence information in a European Union of 25 countries for fear of compromising sources.

"We cannot deal with this threat on a local or national level ... It's about pooling and sharing intelligence on a cross-agency basis," Bruguiere said.

Agencies like the EU police body Europol -- had "not reached their full potential yet," he added.

-- which has been under an acting director since the summer because member countries are arguing over a successor

GERMAN TENSIONS

In Germany, the biggest EU member, reform of the security services has been complicated by tensions between the federal government and the 16 states, each of which has its own police and intelligence services.

Interior Minister Otto Schily, addressing the conference on Tuesday, said he was confident of forcing through constitutional changes to give the Federal Crime Office -- the Bundeskriminalamt or BKA -- more "preventive powers," for example to tap suspects' telephones.

BKA chief Joerg Ziercke voiced frustration with the current situation where the agency is often forced to take a back seat to police forces in the federal states.

"If we receive highly sensitive threat information, we don't want to get into long discussions with the states on whether they have the resources to launch surveillance if I have the resources to do that myself," he told journalists.

Germany is especially sensitive to the threat of Islamist militancy because three of the Sept. 11 hijackers had lived and studied for years in the northern port of Hamburg.

In a drive to improve coordination between the federal police and intelligence services, the government is moving their headquarters to Berlin and setting up a joint database into which they can pool information on Islamist suspects.

But this too is controversial, both with Germany's more than 3 million Muslims and with privacy watchdogs.

Federal Data Protection Commissioner Peter Schaar told the conference Muslims considered to be "extremists" must not be listed in such a database unless there was concrete evidence of links to terrorism.

Top intelligence officials countered that view, saying suspects could always be removed later if terrorist involvement was ruled out. "We shouldn't let (militants) exploit our freedom and data protection rules," said Ruediger von Fritsch, deputy head of the foreign intelligence agency.

11/04/04 13:41

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