BRUSSELS The European Union is moving to seal its leaky borders against illegal immigration and streamline asylum policies to welcome those fleeing real persecution while clamping down on "asylum shoppers" hopping from country to country in search of the best deal.

According to an AFP report, EU justice and interior ministers meeting informally in Stockholm late last week also vowed to target criminal gangs trafficking in human beings, particularly women and children smuggled in for fat fees only to find themselves indentured into forced labor, and prostitution.

While the ministers met in Sweden, which holds the current EU presidency, France and Britain struck a deal of their own to stem the tide of would-be asylum seekers crossing the English Channel on the Eurostar train.

The ministers in Stockholm were clear on the need to harmonize their asylum and immigration laws. But they were also mindful of fears voiced by UN High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers that Europe not become a "fortress" against immigrants seeking a better life.

Mary Robinson, UN high commissioner for human rights speaking in New York before the Stockholm meeting, rejected any moves that would endanger the 1951 UN Convention on Human Rights.

"We should not depart from the basic principle of the ... convention ... to give asylum to those fleeing a well-founded fear of persecution," Straw said. "What we have to do is modernize the practices because the world is a very different one today than it was in 1951."

Sweden, traditionally one of Europe's most welcoming countries to immigrants, was particularly sensitive to the burgeoning trafficking in women and children.

A European Commission report estimated that some 500,000 women and children are smuggled into the EU every year under pretext of getting legitimate jobs and residency permits, to find themselves in forced labor and prostitution.

Swedish Asylum and Immigration Minister Maj-Inger Klingvall told the Stockholm meeting that justice and home affairs ministers from the 13 countries applying for EU membership had been invited to a ministerial meeting on March 16 in Brussels to talks about solutions.

"This is crucial because so many people are flooding into member states and it transpires that a lot of them , mainly women and children, come from the candidate countries," she said.