BERLIN, June 29: German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said on Friday he believed it would be justified to collect personal data about air travellers in Europe in the ‘fight against terrorism’.

Mr Schaeuble defended an existing data collection system in the United States, and said `we will try to build a corresponding system in Europe’.

Mr Schauble said the passenger lists from flights between UK and Pakistan could be of particular interest to investigators because of the proven links between perpetrators in attacks and plots in UK and radicals in Pakistan.

EU officials meeting in Brussels said they had reached an `understanding’ on how to transfer personal information about passengers flying to the United States for use in Washington’s ‘war on terror’.—AFP