EU ministers vow cooperation on terrorism, crime

STRATFORD-UPON-AVON, England, Oct 26 (Reuters) The six largest EU countries pledged today to work together to fight crime, terrorism and illegal migration from Africa.

Interior Ministers from Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain agreed at an informal meeting to fight EU value-added-tax fraud, a particular gripe of the British hosts who say such scams cost billions and may fund terrorism.

They also pledged to work together to fight human trafficking, to share more information about future terrorist threats and make joint overtures to African countries to crack down on illegal migration routes.

The law and order ministers whose countries represent three quarters of the EU population said the meeting would help them set the agenda for the 25-member bloc.

''The important thing is to keep this at the top of the European agenda, because it is at the top of the concerns of the populations of every country which is represented here: organised crime, counter-terrorism, managed migration,'' British Home Secretary John Reid told a news conference.

Reid brought the head of Britain's MI5 security services to discuss terrorism and officials from Britain's Treasury to make a case for a crackdown on so-called ''carousel'' tax fraud.

Britain says these scams, in which people claim tax refunds for goods imported from other EU countries, then disappear before the tax can be repaid, are an urgent problem.

Reid said such schemes could fund terrorism. ''Where there is a large amount of money from crime, it links up with those using violence.'' France's Nicolas Sarkozy called for a common EU-wide policy on granting asylum and said Europe should negotiate as a bloc with African countries on limiting routes used by illegal immigrants.

''There are voices around this table from the right and from the left who are united in seeing the subject of immigration not as a thing of politics but of human drama,'' he said.

Britain and France set up the G6 in 2003 to provide an informal way for big European Union countries to discuss issues of law and order and immigration, areas where leaders have in the past been wary of giving core state powers to Brussels.

At the time, Britain and France were quarrelling over asylum rules that led large numbers of illegal migrants to try to sneak from France into Britain via the Channel Tunnel. Reid praised Sarkozy for a crackdown that helped resolve that problem.

Reuters PB DB2237