G8 ministers are urging the private sector, including Internet service providers, information technology professionals and financial institutions, to help combat child pornography on the Internet.

G8 members from Canada, Germany, the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Japan and Russia met in Munich Thursday for their first working session.

They were briefed by the head of Interpol, the global police agency.

"Because no child should be victimized in this horrific way, today we pledge to redouble our efforts to enforce the international fight against child pornography," G8 interior and justice ministers said in a joint statement. 

'We pledge to redouble our efforts to enforce the international fight against child pornography."G8 Justice Ministers

"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," they added.

For many years, the G8 has been working with Interpol to fight child pornography on the web. It helped set up the International Child Sexual Exploitation Image Database, which is designed to aid police in identifying and rescuing abuse victims.

The database has helped police find more than 500 children worldwide, and contains more than 500,000 images of children being sexually exploited, according to a Reuters interview with Interpol Secretary Ronald K. Noble.

Interpol has developed software capable of identifying crime scenes, which is difficult because child pornographers often distort faces to avoid identification.

Recently, Germany broke a child pornography ring with the help of credit card data provided by financial institutions and credit card firms.

G8 ministers highlighted the urgency to increase international co-operation to fight child pornography following the case of Madeleine McCann, a four-year-old British girl who disappeared in Portugal in early May.