Italian minister calls for preventive strategy on Islamic extremism

(ROME) - The European Union must develop a strategy of prevention to deal with the terrorist threat in Yemen, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said in a television interview Sunday.

"The moment is delicate," he told the private Canale 5 station.

"In Yemen, there are hundreds of active Al-Qaeda men and not only in that country," he said.

The EU had to "rapidly elaborate a strategy of prevention and of collaboration on terrorism," he added.

Frattini stressed that "for a long time we have forgotten the terrorist risk, which unfortunately has reappeared".

A good place to start would be at the January 28 conference on Afghanistan in London, he said.

"The presence of foreign ministers will allow us also to discuss terrorism. I think this will be right moment."

On Friday, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called an international meeting on fighting extremism in Yemen for January 28 in London, the same day as the already scheduled conference on Afghanistan.

The call came after the alleged bid by Nigerian national Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up a plane as it came in to land in Detroit on December 25.

Abdulmutallab is suspected of having received Al-Qaeda training in Yemen.