European Union ministers agreed on Friday to appoint an anti-terrorism co-ordinator and boost intelligence-sharing as Europe faced up to the fact it has become a target for militants after the Madrid bombings.
But France made clear the EU's big five states would control the flow of sensitive information to partners for fear of leaks.
At emergency talks eight days after the Madrid train blasts killed 202 people and wounded 1,800, interior and justice ministers endorsed what Irish Justice Minister Michael McDowell called "a comprehensive response to the terrorist threat".
As they were meeting, a Belgian prosecutor announced police had detained several suspected Islamic militants, including one wanted in connection with the 2003 bombings in Casablanca, Morocco, in a series of raids in Brussels, Antwerp and Tongres.
Spanish investigators are looking into possible links between those bombings and last week's train attack, for which three Moroccans and two Indians were accused of terrorist crimes in a Madrid court on Friday.
Ministers called for the implementation by June of measures such as a European arrest warrant and joint investigation teams approved after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, which are still not in force in some member states.
They rejected bold schemes for a European CIA but were unable to agree on the exact mechanism for sharing data on terrorism more efficiently, asking EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana to make proposals within six months.
There was broad support for German and European Commission ideas for a board or "clearing house" through which states would exchange information on terrorism, diplomats said.
France said it together with Germany, Spain, Italy and Britain - the EU's five biggest members - would lead the way in security co-operation and intelligence-sharing.
"We have the most important intelligence services... We are used to working together," French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy told reporters. But he said it was unrealistic to expect them to share sensitive data with 25 nations or 50 ministers.
"Intelligence is the most difficult and complex thing to share. You have to protect your sources, which is already hard enough to do within the same country," he said.
Illustrating the way the "Big Five" dominate the security debate, their ministers met separately before the EU session.
The ministers set short deadlines for adopting legislation in the works on compensating victims of terror, establishing a European borders agency and setting common rules for how long telephone and Internet service providers must keep records.
But Danish Justice Minister Lene Espersen cautioned: "We should not set new deadlines which will make us a laughing stock. The European arrest warrant has shown with all clarity that we have to have realistic and credible deadlines."
Ministers gave outgoing Spanish Interior Minister Angel Acebes an easy ride, with no suggestion that Spain had misled EU partners by suggesting Basques perpetrated the Madrid attacks.
EU leaders are expected to dramatise their solidarity with Spain next week by invoking a clause that commits EU states to assist any member hit by terrorism, without waiting for it to take legal effect in a stalled EU constitution.
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