European Nations Combine to Combat Crime

Justice and Interior ministers from most major European nations embarked Thursday on their first joint attempt to combat the growing threat of international organized crime, which has mushroomed in the post-Cold War era.

At a news conference, German Interior Minister Manfred Kanther hailed the meeting as “an extremely important day for Europe . . . and for the coordination of (its) internal security.”

The initial steps, however, were modest. Ministers from 22 European nations agreed on a declaration committing their countries to a series of measures aimed at forging closer cooperation, technical assistance and a more exhaustive information exchange.

“I believe we took a step forward today,” said Padraig Flynn, a member of the European Union’s executive commission. “There’s a genuine willingness to convert words into action.”

It is an irony of history that Thursday’s meeting--which included former Communist states of Central Europe--occurred on the same day that Chancellor Helmut Kohl and an array of other dignitaries bade farewell to the last of the U.S., British and French military forces who successfully defended the city for more than four decades from a more visible enemy to the east.

Thursday’s “Berlin declaration” singles out drug trafficking, trafficking in human beings, the rise in cross-border auto theft and Europe’s most frightening new problem--the smuggling of radioactive nuclear materials.

The main target of these measures are highly sophisticated criminal gangs, which in general have been far faster than Europe’s governments to exploit the new freedom of movement that has come with the fall of the Iron Curtain and the end of the Cold War.

The ministers also approved a plan agreed to Wednesday by the 12 EU states, specifically aimed at curtailing nuclear smuggling.

That plan calls for: Using existing Western economic assistance to improve controls on all nuclear materials in the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe; undertaking all possible efforts to prevent nuclear materials from crossing international borders, and intensifying cooperative efforts between law enforcement agencies of European member states.

“The illegal trade in nuclear material is one of the most alarming features of the new European order. . . ,” declared British Home Secretary Michael Howard. “It presents a potential for evil that is hard to exaggerate.”

A series of highly publicized incidents this summer involving attempts to smuggle radioactive plutonium and uranium out of the former Soviet Union to Germany sharply increased public awareness of a problem with potentially disastrous consequences.

According to EU figures, the number of incidents of attempted nuclear smuggling across the old East-West divide has risen steadily, with four cases in 1990, 41 in 1991, 158 in 1992 and 241 last year.

German officials said EU justice and Interior ministers, meeting Wednesday on their own, also made progress on the creation of a new European law enforcement agency, dubbed Europol.