Minister backs EU-wide warrant

Blunkett: wants wider powers to deal with terror threat

Tough new measures to fight crime and combat international terrorism - including a fast-track extradition system - are due to be agreed by EU justice ministers in Brussels.

The UK's Home Secretary David Blunkett will be pressing for a Europe-wide arrest warrant.

The UK also wants the widest possible number of offences to be included in the legislation.

But other nations are set to oppose this on the grounds that it infringes civil liberties.

Italian opposition

EU president Belgium has proposed that the EU-wide arrest warrant cover 32 crimes ranging from terrorism and hijacking to corruption and fraud.

Rooker: 'Britain is used to terrorist threat'

But Italy says it wants the list limited to terrorism and related offences.

Italian Justice Minister Roberto Castelli denied that Rome was blocking a deal.

"We are not isolated. Other countries share our position.

"We want to fight terrorism, this is crucial, and on the rest we have to find ways to harmonise laws," he said as he arrived for Thursday's meeting.

If a deal is not be reached by justice ministers this week, a final decision on the warrant will have to be taken by EU leaders at their summit meeting next week in Laeken, Belgium.

'Breaking promises'

The process of agreement has been speeded up since 11 September, but there is concern from opposition voices in the UK that the measures go too far.

It has got nothing to do with terrorism. This one has been brewing in Brussels for years

Lord Pearson

Conservative peer Lord Pearson of Rannock said the government had pledged not to introduce any EU legislation that was not agreed by the Commons select committees and they had rejected the proposals as they currently stand.

"If the Government go ahead with this today in anything like that form then it would entail breaking its promise to Parliament," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

The peer added: "It has got nothing to do with terrorism. This one has been brewing in Brussels for years."

'Serving criminals'

But the leader of Labour MEPs, Simon Murphy, said the measures were an essential step "to create a legal system for the 21st Century".

To not agree new measures at an EU level would be to "serve the interests of criminals", he added.

Home Office Minister Lord Rooker said the measures were needed because some countries in Europe had few laws to cope with the terrorist threat.

The UK, by contrast, had "more than 30 years" of experience of terrorism because of the situation in Northern Ireland, he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

Lords defeat looms

Meanwhile, the British government faces defeat over key parts of its own anti-terror legislation, opposition peers in the House of Lords have predicted.

Conservative peers inflicted the government's first parliamentary defeat since the general election on part of the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Bill last week.

Now the Tories plan to work together with the Liberal Democrats to cause more problems for ministers as the bill goes into its report stage in the Lords.