Staff writer

Senior officials from the Group of Eight countries will meet in Japan in late November to work out a menu of policy options for G8 countries to counter high-tech crime, especially computer hacking, government sources said Wednesday.

The sources said the meeting will be held as a followup to an agreement reached last October among G8 ministers in charge of law-enforcement. The G8 Ministerial Conference on Combating Transnational Organized Crime, held in Moscow, agreed to compile, within a year, a package of policy options for the G8 countries to counter high-tech crime.

The planned meeting in Japan will be attended by the so-called Lyon Group of senior G8 police, justice, foreign-policy and other officials, the sources said.

The Lyon Group was established at the G8 summit in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1995 to discuss measures to combat transnational organized crime. It adopted a 40-point policy recommendation and reported it to top G8 leaders meeting in 1996 in Lyon, France.

The planned Lyon Group's meeting in late November will be the third to be held in Japan this year. The group met in February and April to prepare for the G8 summit in Okinawa Prefecture in late July. Japan will chair the G8 by the end of this year.

In their communique issued at the end of their meeting in Okinawa, the G8 leaders vowed to "take a concerted approach to high-tech crime, such as cybercrime, which could seriously threaten security and confidence in the global information society."

The G8 comprises the United States, Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Japan and Russia.