Interior ministers from five leading EU states on Tuesday announced the creation of an information exchange network on suspects believed linked to terrorism and of a system alerting them to the theft of explosives and other sensitive material.

"We are going to exchange information on persons linked to international terrorism and who are under reasonable suspicion ... for example, people who have attended jihadist (Muslim extremist) training camps," Spanish Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso said as he and his G5 colleagues from Britain, France, Germany and Italy ended talks in this southern Spanish city.

"The information the police of the five countries will share includes data pertaining to people and activities suspected of links to terrorism," Alonso added.

Furthermore the G5 countries decided to make available to their respective crime-fighting forces information deemed useful to help fight organised crime in general.

"The principle is that each country will be assured of immediately obtaining the information it requires and which another country possesses, Alonso said.

Such information will include, for example, the fabrication of false identity papers, stolen cars, digital fingerprint databases and results of DNA tests, as well as missing persons and unidentified corpses.

The ministers agreed that the information held in their respective police databases should be available to their counterparts on demand to facilitate access to information suspects.

The alert system covering missing explosives, including stocks of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, was decided upon after suspected Islamic extremists acquired dynamite from a disused Spanish mine to carry out the Madrid train bombings 12 months ago.

The ministers failed, however, to draw up a common legal framework to facilitate the expulsion of suspected terrorists but who have not committed a crime in any of the five countries.

"We found that each country already has a sufficient democratic legal framework," Alonso said.

"We intend to work in a practical, concrete, pragmatic and constructive manner," the ministers said in a joint statement.

On Monday, Alonso said the forum would show the EU's determination to act decisively against the threat of terrorism and organised crime by improving the exchange of information between EU police forces.

The issue has been of overriding concern since the September 11 attacks on the United States and the March 11 attacks in Madrid a year ago.

The meeting came as police along Spain's Costa del Sol on the Mediterranean were investigating a multi-million-dollar international money-laundering network following dozens of arrests late last week.

Alonso on Monday dubbed money laundering the "spinal cord" of organised crime.

French Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin said France would host a meeting on border control in May, insisting that "each country must be able to preserve the possibility of controlling its frontiers."

German counterpart Otto Schily emphasised the need "to control not just the entry into but the exit from our territories."

Late Monday, the ministers stressed the need to make a distinction between terrorists loyal to Al-Qaeda and Muslims.

G5 meetings are informal. The decisions taken by the forum are not legally binding but nonetheless serve as a yardstick for EU states in general.