Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, said the European Commission was currently conducting such studies.

"Once we have these studies on the table we will make a decision," he told Janet Napolitano, US Homeland Security Secretary, at a press conference following Thursday's talks in Toledo, Spain.

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said Berlin could reach a decision about installing full-body scanners at German airports by the middle of this year.

"They have to be effective, not harm health, and not violate privacy," he told reporters after the talks.

"It is not a question of acting under pressure; it is a question of national and European security," de Maiziere added.

US pressing the issue

Napolitano was looking to overcome European doubts about installing full-body scanners at airports and hoping to persuade the ministers to follow the US lead in beefing up airport security.

She said the US had already installed 40 full-body scanners at its airports and that at least 450 were planned for next year.

"Al-Qaeda has used and will use its best minds against aviation security and we must do no less," Napolitano said.

The talks came in response to a foiled terror attack on Christmas Day as a result of which a 23-year-old Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, has been accused of trying to detonate a bomb on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.

The US request to install body scanners at European airports has the backing of the EU's anti-terror coordinator Gilles de Kerchove.

Privacy issues

"I am in favor of the body scanners as long as there are rules in place. They are useful for detecting cases such as the Detroit case where someone hid explosives around his private parts which were not searched by hand," Kerchove said earlier this month.

In 2008, the European Parliament opposed a move by the EU Commission to introduce the scanners across the bloc, calling for more studies on possible radiation dangers and privacy issues. Privacy campaigners say the technology violates European law by producing sexually explicit images.

Outgoing EU justice and security commissioner Jacques Barrot said there must be guarantees that the images taken by the scanners are destroyed immediately.

His view is shared by successor Viviane Reding. "Europe's need for security cannot justify an invasion of privacy. Our citizens are not objects: they are human beings," Reding told the European Parliament last week.

glb/AFP/dpa
Editor: Susan Houlton