(BRUSSELS) - Amnesty International on Tuesday denounced EU policies on asylum-seekers as a lottery for the right to stay in "Fortress Europe".

"Fortress Europe... is a reality," Amnesty's secretary general Irene Khan told an EPC meeting in Brussels after talks with EU officials.

"Access to Europe is very difficult and the initial border of the European Union is being pushed further and further away," she added, citing rescue operations in the Mediterranean, patrols in Senegal and increasing cooperation with transit countries.

Khan voiced doubt over whether such policies were designed primarily to prevent people from embarking on dangerous journeys or to ensure that those people cannot reach Europe.

On top of the overall difficulties facing would-be immigrants, Khan called European immigration policy "a lottery" due to the various policies in place throughout the 27-nation bloc.

Under European rules immigrants are to be handled in the first EU country they enter, regardless of where they travel to later.

Khan said that the push for higher security since the September 11 attacks in the United States in 2001 had made matters worse, and less fair, for immigrants.

"Once the politics of fear takes over then obviously human rights takes second place," she said after her talks with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, EU Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso and EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn.

There is a post-9/11 tendency in Europe to group all foreigners together, regardless of their status and situation, she complained.

"In the popular mind refugees, asylum seekers, migrants, irregular migrants and foreigners in general, suspicious foreigners are all muddled up and that of course is very dangerous," she said.

Italy's prime minister-elect Silvio Berlusconi on Tuesday vowed to crack down on illegal immigrants, saying those involved in crime were part of an "army of evil."

Berlusconi, elected with a solid margin on Monday, vowed to cooperate with Italy's neighbours in "deporting non-EU citizens who are here and do not have work or home and are forced into crime in order to live."

The European Commission is expected to publish in June a paper on the EU's asylum policy.

Legislative proposals could follow to set up a level playing field for immigrants to EU nations and to make Europe a less attractive prospect to potential asylum seekers.

France, which will assume the EU's rotating presidency in July, has made immigration a priority.

The French government practises a strict asylum policy and expels foreigners caught without the right papers.

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