France to strengthen video surveillance system

PARIS (Reuters) - France will triple its number of video surveillance cameras by 2009 as part of the fight against terrorism and street crime, Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said on Friday.

Alliot-Marie told Le Monde newspaper video surveillance was relatively undeveloped in France.

"The latest attacks in London were prevented thanks to their video surveillance system, (which is) 10 times more developed than ours," she told Le Monde.

An official report put the number of authorized cameras in France at about 340,000, Le Monde said.

Alliot-Marie said the Paris public transport network would expand its surveillance network to 6,500 cameras, while systems operating in provincial cities would be progressively linked to police control rooms.

France stepped up security measures after the 2005 attacks in London's transport system that killed 52 people.

French authorities have said gang violence is a growing problem in Paris, which has seen repeated clashes between rival gangs in recent months.

Alliot-Marie last month announced the creation of a special police unit on youth violence and said information collected by video surveillance should be shared among different services.

French police hope a mini spy-in-the-sky drone the size of a toy glider will help them track rioters and fight crime.