Malta will be raising the New Year's Eve attack on Coptics in Alexandria, Egypt at the next EU foreign ministers' meeting.
Foreign Minister Tonio Borg in a statement said that Malta condemned the attack against innocent worshippers.
He expressed his deepest sympathies to the families and friends of the victims, and to the Egyptian Authorities. He also lauded the efforts of the Egyptian authorities in fighting terrorism and extremist groups and expressed the hope that the guilty would be apprehended and that religious worship be secured.
The Pope and several European governments condemned the attack yesterday.
21 Coptics were killed in a suspected suicide bombing after midnight Mass and 79 were injured as worshippers were leaving Al-Qiddissin (The Saints) church in Alexandria.
France said today that an investigation had started after threats on Coptic churches in France. Germany's Coptic Christians have also received threats of attack by radical Muslims and asked for protection, a bishop said.
Egypt, meanwhile, is on high alert ahead of the Coptic Christmas holiday, on January 7.
Police cancelled leave for senior officers and were tightening surveillance of airports and ports to prevent suspects from leaving the country, as new checkpoints were set up across the nation.
The clampdown came amid concerns of new protests by Copts following overnight clashes at Cairo's St. Mark's Cathedral -- seat of Coptic leader Pope Shenouda III -- during which 45 policemen were wounded.
A health ministry official said 27 other people were also wounded.
The protesters pelted with stones a minister who called to visit the pope and heckled government officials, while other demonstrators blocked off four main streets in Cairo before police dispersed them.
Coptic Christmas will fall on Friday -- the weekly Muslim day of prayer and rest -- and Shenouda said he intended to say Mass as usual on Christmas Eve.
"Not praying would mean that terrorism has deprived us of celebrating the birth of Christ," the official Al-Ahram newspaper quoted him as saying.
A security official said on Sunday that about 20 people were detained for questioning but there was no evidence any of them was directly connected to the attack.
Al-Ahram quoted security officials as saying that the bomb was a sophisticated device packed with TNT and pieces of metal aimed at causing the largest possible number of casualties.
No one claimed responsibility for the attack, which came two months after an Al-Qaeda-linked group said it was behind a deadly Baghdad church hostage-taking and threatened Coptic Christians as well.
The group demanded the release of two women, Camelia Shehata and Wafa Constantine, both priests' wives, it said the Coptic church was holding against their will after they converted to Islam.
An Al-Qaeda-linked website that published that threat posted in December a list of Egyptian churches it said should be attacked, including the church targeted in the Alexandria bombing.
It urged "every Muslim who cares about the honour of his sisters to bomb these churches during Christmas celebrations, when they will be most crowded."
Egypt, the most populous Arab country, witnessed a resurgence in attacks by Islamist militants in the past decade after the government battled a spate of attacks in the 1990s that included an attempt abroad to kill the president.
President Hosni Mubarak has vowed to find those responsible for the bombing which he said targeted all Egyptians, regardless of their faith, and blamed "foreign hands."
The bombing has further underscored the vulnerability of the Copts, who make up about 10 percent of the country's 80-million population and complain of discrimination.
Last year began with a massacre of six Copts and a Muslim security guard after a Coptic Christmas Eve mass and ended on a tense note after two Coptic protesters died in clashes in a protest over a Cairo church permit.
Some Coptic activists have accused the government of not doing enough to prevent incitement against the minority, especially after Islamists began staging regular demonstrations demanding Shehata's release.
Shehata, like Constantine in 2004, fled from her husband last year and reportedly wanted a divorce, which is very difficult to obtain from the Coptic church.
The church has denied that either of the women converted. Women's rights activists say Coptic women have been known to convert, either to Islam or to another Christian denomination, to escape unhappy marriages.
CONDEMNATION IN MALTA
Meanwhile, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat community in Malta condemned the attack on the Egyptian church.
“This is no doubt, an inhuman, heinous and cruel attack, which should be condemned. The Ahmadiyya Community condemns the attack in strongest terms, and demands the authorities to bring the culprits in front of justice as soon as possible,” the community said in a statement.