The European Union's coordinated police force, Europol, will boost cooperation with the US police in the fight against international terrorism following the devastating attacks in New York and Washington.
"Over the next week, we will travel to the United States with a delegation from the Belgian presidency of the European Union to begin talks on a cooperation accord," Europol's German director Mr Juergen Stoerbeck said in today
Rheinische Post
, a local Dusseldorf newspaper.
Mr Stoerbeck warned against concentrating police and intelligence service efforts solely on the Saudi-born extremist Osama bin Laden, seen by many as the prime suspect in the attacks on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon building near Washington on Tuesday which left thousands feared dead.
There are "good arguments" in favour of the view that "other groups" sharing "the same convictions" and perhaps linked to bin Laden, carried out the attacks, he said.
Meanwhile Philippine authorities have arrested several suspected foreign bombers and are looking into the possibility of their link to Tuesday’s attacks, a top justice official said today.
Justice Secretary Hernando Perez said in an interview with a local radio station that it was "too much of a coincidence" that they were arrested just after terrorist attacks.