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Interior and justice ministers from the G8 nations - Germany, USA, Britain, France, Italy, Canada, Japan and Russia promised to step up efforts to stamp out child porn during the first working session of a conference on Web crime in Munich, Germany.

'We categorically denounce those who sexually exploit children by producing images of their sexual abuse and by distributing or collecting such images,' they said in the joint declaration.

The G8 has been working with Interpol for years to combat child pornography and helped it establish the International Child Sexual Exploitation Image Database, which is intended to help police identify and rescue victims of such abuse. But the declaration made it clear that government authorities alone cannot solve the problem

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and that the private sector will have to get involved as well. It did not say how they could help.

'Private sector entities including Internet Service Providers, information technology professionals and financial institutions ... the media, parents and educators, should be encouraged to consider what role they could play in the fight,' it said.

Germany recently smashed a child pornography ring thanks to an unprecedented examination of credit card data provided by financial institutions and credit card companies.

German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries said child pornography was 'easy money' for criminals who sell illegal images to interested customers in cyberspace.

Referring to the German case, she said customers paid some €77 per person, allowing the organisers to quickly amass more than €30,000.

'It's possible to make a lot of money in a very short period of time,' she told reporters.

German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said ministers would also discuss terrorism in the afternoon session of the G8 meeting, which ends on Friday.

'A special task will be to identify and curb, wherever possible, the terrorist use of the Internet,' he said, adding that two young men who attempted to bomb train stations in Germany last year had made their devices with information they found on the Internet.