PARIS, Jan 17: French President Jacques Chirac and the first ladies of the United States and Russia, Laura Bush and Lyudmila Putin, issued a joint call on Wednesday to combat child pornography and abductions.

Introducing a conference in Paris hosted by his wife Bernadette, Chirac said there was an urgent need for “greater international cooperation to stop the frightening development of paedophilia and child pornography on the Internet.” The International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (ICMEC), which organised the event, hopes to persuade Internet providers to do more to combat the spread of child porn websites, already numbered at over 100,000 worldwide.

“When a child is raped, it is a blow to the whole of humanity,” Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel told the meeting. “All societies are defined by how they behave towards the weak.” High-profile participants also included Suzanne Mubarak of Egypt, Poland's former first lady Jolanta Kwasniewska, Queen Paola of Belgium and Queen Silvia of Sweden, and the governor of Saint Petersburg Valentina Matvyenko.

They also aimed to raise awareness of a new Europe-wide hotline for missing children, number 116 000, set to be up and running by end March, although Bernadette Chirac warned that for it to work would require a major gear-shift in terms of European and international cooperation.—AFP