Passenger Profiling Among EU's Proposed Anti-Terror Measures

European Commission Vice President and Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini aired the ideas in London as British and other European Union interior ministers mapped out strategy following Britain's thwarting of an alleged plane bombing plot last week.

Other measures were aimed at stopping the spread of extremist ideas over the Internet and at forming a European "rapid reaction force" of experts who could be sent to any member country hit by a terrorist attack, Frattini said.

The "concrete proposals" will be submitted to an informal meeting of EU interior ministers in Tampere, Finland, on September 20 to 22 with a view to implementing them throughout the 25-member bloc, he said. Finland currently holds the rotating EU presidency.

Frattini stressed a proposal to help security services better detect explosives, particularly liquid explosives, and trace commercial detonators.

British authorities announced last Thursday they had foiled an alleged plot to blow up US-bound airliners in mid-air using liquid explosives smuggled aboard in drinks bottles or other containers.

"Explosives is an area of particular vulnerability despite the important success achieved by the British authorities," Frattini told a press conference alongside Britain's Home Secretary John Reid.

He also proposed expanding a system of sharing data on passengers currently involving the European Union, the United States, Canada and Australia.

"Our ideas are to extend to the European territory, to all flights into, through, from the territory of one or more member states and perhaps including the intra-EU flights," Frattini said.

"We could explore positive profiling for passengers allowing them to be checked well in advance in order to make quicker and easier the controls on board," he added, without elaborating.

British majority in favor of profiling

A majority of British voters support profiling air passengers in the wake of an alleged plot to bomb US-bound planes in mid-flight, according to a poll published on Thursday.

In a poll of 1,696 respondents by YouGov published in The Spectator magazine, 55 percent backed the idea of security screenings at airports, focusing on the passengers who pose the greatest risk.

Some 60 percent also said they expected the threat from terrorist groups to worsen, and 79 percent felt the government was not winning the so-called "war on terror."

According to The Times on Tuesday, the Department for Transport was considering a system to single out people behaving suspiciously, who have an unusual travel pattern, or a certain ethnic or religious background.

But the plan -- similar to one operated by Israeli airline El Al -- was condemned by one of Britain's most senior Muslim police officers, who said that could lead to a new offense of "traveling whilst Asian."

EU proposes the promotion of "European Islam"

Muslim leaders in Britain on Tuesday objected to ideas raised by former police officers and others of having airport authorities use personal details including religion and travel history to pinpoint terror suspects.

They warned it could alienate the community whose help the government needs in fighting terrorism.

In a bid to prevent the radicalization of European Muslims, Frattini also proposed measures to train imams, or Muslim prayer leaders, in how to incorporate European values of human rights into the principles of Islam.

"We do want a European Islam," he said.

"That is very important not only to show to the Muslim communities that we fully respect other religions, other faiths, but we also want them to respect national laws, European laws and fundamental rights, and first of all right to live," Frattini said.

Calls for a common EU approach

Reid urged his European Union counterparts to make sure that anti-terror measures were consistent throughout the 25-member union. "It's very important that the measures that are taken in one country are reflected in other countries because we want equal security for all our countries," Reid said.

European ministers also released 350,000 euros ($450,000) for urgent research into detecting liquid explosives following Wednesday's meeting, a Home Office spokeswoman told reporters.

The meeting in London involved the interior ministers of France, Germany, Finland, Portugal and Slovenia as well as Frattini and the EU's counter-terrorism coordinator Gijs De Vries.