Germany demanded EU take emergency action on Wednesday to secure air freight after parcel bombs were sent from Greece to Angela Merkel and other European targets.
by Bruno Waterfield and Nick Squires
Security services in Greece, Italy and Germany were investigating the co-ordinated campaign, which caused a continent-wide alert.
Mrs Merkel told a German newspaper that the EU needed to agree common rules on air cargo security, implying that freight-checking procedures were not up to the job of intercepting bombs.
"We have a global patchwork of security rules for air freight," she said.
EU officials told The Daily Telegraph that, while governments were responsible for passenger security, freight checks were carried out by companies with "trusted supplier" status.
"The interior ministers might want to look at the rules which currently allow accredited air freight and postal courier companies to do their own security checks," an official said. "It is difficult to detect devices in bulk cargo but if the feeling is that the bombs got through because checks were not tight enough then the rules will be looked at."
Police and intelligence services were put on high alert after booby-trapped packages were sent to Mrs Merkel, Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's prime minister, and foreign embassies in Athens.
The bombs were linked to a radical Greek anarchist group known as the Conspiracy in the Cells of Fire. It has claimed responsibility for several attacks against the state over the past year, including ones on the parliament building in Athens, a police detention centre, and a government building in the northern city of Thessaloniki.
The explosives in the device intercepted in Italy ignited when examined by bomb experts but did not cause any injuries.
An Italian investigation was examining a link between Greek extremists and Italian militant groups.
George Papandreou, the Greek prime minister, said the government would be "unyielding" in hunting for the bombers, whom he accused of trying to sabotage Greece's attempts to pull back from the brink of economic disaster.
"Democracies cannot be terrorised," he said. "These irresponsible and mindless acts were intended to harm the Greek people's huge effort to set the country to rights, to set the economy on its feet and for the country to regain its credibility. They will not succeed." Greece imposed a 48-hour ban on sending parcels abroad by air freight and screened thousands of packages in an attempt to locate any remaining bombs.
Theresa May, the Home Secretary, is expected to back calls for increased air freight security at a meeting of EU interior ministers in Brussels on Monday.
"The idea is to get working on some concrete proposals to improve aviation security, including cargo. It might even be that something can be done right away," said a diplomat.
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