BARCELONA, Spain (AFP) - France and Spain are to set up a joint police corps to combat terrorism by Islamic extremists, Spanish Justice Minister Juan Fernando Lopez Aguilar said following a meeting with his French counterpart here.
"Today we are going to take a very important step in the anti-terrorist fight within the European Union in signing the first accord for a joint Spanish-French inquiry corps," Aguilar announced after conferring with French Justice Minister Dominique Perben.
The body will consist of police and magistrates and will seek to crack down on the armed Basque separatist group ETA -- an area where Paris and Madrid are already cooperating closely -- "but also, and of course right away, on Islamic terrorism, notably (its) financing," Aguilar said.
The announcement came the day after Spanish police arrested 10 people, most of them Pakistanis, suspected of involvement in Islamic extremism in an operation in the northeastern region of Catalonia.
Perben said Spain had agreed to grant French police the same powers as its own when they need to operate over the border as part of a reciprocal agreement.
Spanish Defence Minister Jose Bono and his French counterpart Michele Alliot-Marie meanwhile hailed an initiative announced Wednesday to create a five-nation gendarmerie covering France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands.
Bono estimated the para-military force would be "operational in a maximum of 30 days."
Ten Spanish and French ministers were meeting in Barcelona on Thursday to prepare the first bilateral talks between Spain's Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero, who came to office five months ago, and French President Jacques Chirac on December 7 in the northeastern Spanish city of Zaragoza.
The two men met Monday in a three-way summit in Madrid with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder when Zapatero, seeking to place Spain back in the bloc's mainstream, directed a thinly-veiled barb in the direction of Washington by declaring that "the old Europe is brand new."
He was referring to US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's controversial comments labeling European opponents of the war in Iraq as being part of "Old Europe".
Zapatero, who like EU heavyweights Paris and Berlin opposes the US-led war in Iraq, broke with the policies of Jose Maria Aznar, his conservative predecessor and strong backer of the US hard line on Iraq, after his surprise election win in March.
The turnaround was triggered by voter disgust over the Madrid train bombings that month blamed on Islamic extremists that left 191 people dead. Many Spaniards saw the tragedy as a revenge attack for Aznar's solid backing of the US-led intervention in Iraq despite strong domestic opposition.
The Madrid bombings brought home to European governments the immediacy of the terror threat on the continent and increased the urgency with which EU powers are seeking to mount a coordinated response.
Thursday's meeting came with France and Spain having in recent months seen their enhanced cooperation in tracking ETA suspects bear fruit with several high-profile arrests.
ETA has killed more than 800 people in a 36-year campaign for independence in the Basque region of northern Spain and parts of southwestern France.
The deposed Aznar government initially blamed the group for the March 11 blasts despite evidence fingering Islamic extremists.