Sangatte to close by March

The controversial Sangatte refugee camp near the French end of the Channel Tunnel could be closed by the end of the year and by next March at the latest, Britain and France agreed today.

After months of wrangling, a deal at talks in Paris set the timetable for the centre to shut down - subject to the introduction of sweeping new UK laws designed to discourage illegal asylum seekers.

Home Secretary David Blunkett and his French counterpart Nicholas Sarkozy agreed that the camp, housing about 1,500 would-be asylum seekers, will close some time in the last quarter of this year or the first quarter of next year.

The exact timetable, explained Mr Blunkett after the meeting, will depend on the completion of the UK's new Nationality Immigration and Asylum Bill.

As soon as it has gone through Parliament and received Royal assent, France will be ready to remove the Sangatte centre, from where hundreds of desperate asylum seekers have been trying to reach Britain illegally aboard trains through the Channel Tunnel.

Mr Blunkett said he had already make provision for his new Bill to be speeded up, short-cutting the usual procedures, so that it could be in place by mid-October.

The exact timetable for shutting Sangatte will be fixed by Mr Blunkett and Mr Sarkozy, when they meet to review final progress at the Frethun rail freight terminal near Calais in September.

Meanwhile a new joint Anglo-French immigration squad is to be set up to help police the French Channel Tunnel entrance to weed out illegal asylum seekers - along the lines of the highly-successful joint force already curbing the illegal immigration flow aboard the Eurostar trains from Paris to Waterloo.

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