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EU i nterior ministers are to gather tomorrow 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 9/11.

Proposals being considered at the hastily-arranged talks in Brussels include creating an EU "Mr Terrorism" to coordinate a security clampdown, setting up a CIA-style intelligence agency for Europe and invoking a "solidarity" clause.

Terrorism has leapt to the top of Europe's agenda after last week's rush-hour train blasts, which killed over 200 people and injured some 1 500 in the worst act of terror since the 1988 Lockerbie bombing over Scotland.

The EU's Irish presidency called tomorrow's talks to prepare the ground for a summit of EU leaders next week likely to be overshadowed by the Madrid attacks.

Spanish 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.

"Terrorism is an affront to our democracies," Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said during a visit to Washington yesterday.

"We're determined to ensure that our peoples are protected from this despicable scourge," he added.

On the ground the Madrid blasts have triggered an immediate boost in security across Europe, with attention focused notably on public transport.

Britain, Europe's closest ally over the Iraq war, is notably on high alert.

But the EU, which agreed a raft of new initiatives after the September 2001 attacks on the US, is under pressure to do more.

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

coordinator" - boosting cooperation among EU intelligence services, and

- tightening up measures to cut off extremists' funding.

Pressure may also be exerted over the European arrest warrant, one of the measures agreed after 9/11 but which has yet to be ratified by several countries: Austria, Italy, Germany, Greece and the Netherlands.

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 "targetted cooperation between our countries, but also political measures to develop cooperation between Europe and the Arab world".

Germany's interior minister Otto Schily, who was the first to call for the emergency talks, said they should draw up an assessment of the wider threat from Islamic extremists and "coordinate 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.

French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder this week pledged to "further improve coordination between our intelligence and police services as well as our justice systems".

But 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 spokesperson Reijo Kemppinen. – Sapa-AFP.

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