Police 'spotters' in place to pick out hooligans

BERLIN, June 6 (Reuters) Foreign police officers who specialise in tracking soccer hooligans are deploying across Germany in the final days before the World Cup and officials said on Tuesday they were confident of averting violent clashes.

Special officers known as 'spotters' will mingle among the estimated 1.5 million foreign fans expected to visit the country during the month-long tournament which starts on Friday, looking out for supporters with violent track records.

Unlike England, which has confiscated the passports of nearly 3,300 known troublemakers, most countries have no legal powers to prevent potentially violent fans from travelling and therefore have to rely on close observation by the 'spotters', some of them in plain clothes.

''They will support and inform the German police officers about any possible threat, about any well-known faces of our hooligans who could travel and could reach Dortmund, Hanover or Gelsenkirchen,'' Polish police spokesman Rafal Wasiak said, referring to the cities where his country's team is playing.

He played down German fears in the run-up to the tournament that some Polish fans might try to set times and venues for pre-arranged brawls with foreign counterparts, as happened near the German-Polish border late last year.

''I strongly believe nothing like that will happen. The exchange of information has achieved such a level that it won't be easy for them to arrange such meetings,'' Wasiak said.

''Altogether we will have a little army of cops who will take care of you,'' he told reporters.

Swedish police spokesman Lennart Petersson told Reuters there were about 800 known problem fans in the Nordic country, of whom a quarter or more may come to the World Cup.

''We have no rules for taking their passports away. We think maybe 200 to 300 of them are coming to Germany,'' he said.

If his six spotters identified such individuals, they would intervene straight away to warn them they were under surveillance. ''You must de-anonymise them, so that they know that we know that they're here.'' EUROPEAN COOPERATION Hooligan clashes have overshadowed previous soccer tournaments in Europe, and Germany has forged an unprecedented level of international police cooperation to prevent disruption this time.

Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble on Tuesday welcomed 320 uniformed officers from 13 European countries who will work with an estimated 250,000 German police during the month-long event.

Apart from handcuffs and batons, they will not carry weapons but they are empowered to make arrests.

''It's a symbol of European cooperation, of the international character of this tournament and its enormous power to bring people together,'' Schaeuble said. ''Soccer fans from all over the world will feel not only safe but at home in our country.'' French police spokesman Yann Asselin said his 42-strong contingent included many officers with experience from the 1998 tournament, which was held in France.

''You can't speak of risk matches at the moment but you have to keep the overall context in mind and be vigilant,'' he said.

Superintendent Roger Evans from Britain said he did not expect England supporters to pose a threat. But he also sounded a note of caution.

''You put an awful lot of football fans together in close proximity, and anything could happen,'' he said.

REUTERS DH BST2004