German Minister Calls for Internet Monitoring to Fight Terror

In an interview with newsweekly Die Zeit to be published on Thursday, Schäuble said that the country needed a raft of new security measures to halt attacks.

"It would be irresponsible to conclude from the success of the police search that we do not need to do more," he said, referring to the capture on Saturday of one of two Lebanese men suspected of planting bombs on trains last month. A second suspect, also captured on security cameras while planting the bombs, has been identified but remains at large. Technical defects prevented an almost certain bloodbath.

The notion of beefing up security powers is contentious in Germany due to the abuses by the Nazi and communist dictatorships, but Schäuble said that more monitoring was needed.

"More security cameras should be used where it is sensible," he said. "We need to step up monitoring of the Internet, for which we need more experts with the right language skills. We also need to intensify checks on the rail lines and air traffic security."

Schäuble, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), also urged wider observation of suspicious groups by the domestic intelligence service and said Muslims in Germany could do more to stamp out extremism.

"The great majority of Muslims must say what they think more loudly -- that they reject terror," Schäuble said. "After all, it threatens Muslims just as much as non-Muslims. We need the cooperation of organizations to fight extremists in their ranks."

Muslims wary of blanket condemnation

The Central Council of Muslims in Germany offered on Wednesday to step up its cooperation with the security services but warned against any blanket condemnation of Islam in the fight against violent extremists.

General secretary Aiman Mazyek told public broadcaster ARD that the council aimed to offer more local contacts to police "because it is a Muslim duty and our duty as citizens to report extremist tendencies."

He said the vast majority of Muslims in Germany rejected violence and were angered by being lumped together with "terrorists."

In a separate interview with Berlin's daily Der Tagesspiegel, Mazyek said the council had recently received death threats.

"A murder remains a murder, an attempted murder an attempted murder regardless of the perpetrator's religion," he said.