Anti-terrorism summit begins in Paris
Anti-terrorist justice officials from nine countries have met for closed-door talks in Paris today.
Discussions will centre on creating a new international network to ward off attacks and determining a common definition of charges.
At the invitation of French Minister for Justice Pascal Clement, 41 anti-terrorist judges and other justice officials from the United States, Britain, Germany, Spain, Indonesia, Morocco and The Netherlands joined the meeting.
Clement is seeking to create a multilateral co-operation network based on existing bilateral anti-terrorist co-operation.
Clement said in his introduction speech, released by the Justice Ministry, that this new network "could expand to other countries already endowed with a centralised system to fight against this blight or willing to set up such a system".
Ministry spokesman Guillaume Didier said terrorist "networks are international, they are spread everywhere, so anti-terrorist justice has to be international and spread everywhere".
The ministry said the judges at today's meeting were to work out a common definition of charges for people allegedly conspiring to stage terrorist acts.
In France, "association with a criminal enterprise" is a common charge that allows courts to try such suspects.
The were also to talk about centralising prosecution of terrorist acts, the role of investigating judges and trials for terrorist acts.
US Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein and top French anti-terrorist judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere were among the officials at the meetings, as were officials from Eurojust, a Europe-wide body overseeing efforts to fight organised crime and transnational crime.
