Brussels, 10/12/2009 (Agence Europe) - The French home affairs minister, Brice Hortefeux, told the French parliament on Wednesday 9 December that he wanted the EU to set up an anti-drugs pact along the lines of the EU joint immigration and asylum policy adopted under the French Presidency of the EU. Hortefeux has recently written to the Swedish Presidency of the Council of the EU, the future Spanish Presidency and the European Commission, arguing for an anti-drugs pact comprising a timetable, targets and a strategy, and for it to be pursued hand-in-hand with counties outside the EU (illegal drugs transit and production countries). The plan was unveiled on Wednesday in French newspaper Le Figaro, which explains that it will take a two-pronged approach - on land and at sea. The minister is trying to bolster two brand-new coast surveillance centres, one in Accra (the capital of Ghana) and the other in Dakar (the capital of Senegal). Paris wants more French liaison officers to be sent to the two cities and urges its EU neighbours to follow suit. The idea is based on the Maritime Analysis and Operation Centre (MAOC) in Lisbon (Portugal), which has been coordinating the seizure of a raft of ships transporting illegal drugs. On land, particularly in Africa, Hortefeux argued at the recent EU home office ministers' meeting in Brussels that drug-trafficking destabilised countries because terrorist groups send cocaine from Latin America to the Gulf of Guinea and from there to Northern Africa and on to Europe. He said that terrorism was now expanding in drug transit countries and called for measures to be taken to put a halt to this, using the European Commission's Instrument for Stability, for example, which has €118 million earmarked for 2009-2011, some of which could be used to help African countries that are victims of drug trafficking and drug transiting. Hortefeux wants to take advantage of next year's conference on drug trafficking in Dakar to decide on new forms of cooperation between the EU and Africa in judicial and customs matters. He wants the assets of criminals to be frozen and the EU to be given draconian powers to seize drug traffickers' assets. Brice Hortefeux said that an upcoming action plan would test out the EU Security Committee (COSI), set up under the Lisbon Treaty and would also require the help of the European Commission and specialist crime-fighting agencies like Europol and Eurojust. Hortefeux wants North Africa and Namibia to join the action plan because drug-trafficking in and from those countries is likely to intensify in the near future. Hortefeux hopes to win his colleagues round at the EU's Justice and Home Affairs Council in Toledo in January 2010 at the start of the six-month Spanish Presidency of the EU. Some 17% of Latin American cocaine currently reaches the EU (from Colombia, Peru and Bolivia), in other words more than 150 tonnes with a street value of €9 billion. (B.C./transl.fl)