By Steve Weizman

COPENHAGEN, Sept 26 (Reuter) Rival Nordic motorcycle gangs may have
promised to end a bloody fouryear feud but the public expressed fears
on Friday that the bikers would now have more time for organised crime.

Newspapers and politicians in Denmark, Norway and Sweden urged police to
keep a close eye on the Hells Angels and Bandidos after gang leaders
said they had ordered members to end a war that has killed 10 people.

``That the bikers have now apparently decided to keep the peace means
only one thing: Peace with each other,'' the Danish tabloid Ekstra
Bladet wrote in an editorial.

``A cooperation agreement on the drug market, of which they together
control a large part, would be called a merger in the established
business world,'' it said.

Danish leaders of the two gangs, both offshoots of U.S. motorcycle
clans, made a joint television broadcast on Thursday night telling
members to end attacks on one another and warning that offenders would
be cast out of the biker fraternity.

``We shall make sure that anyone straying will be excluded from our
circle,'' Hells Angel veteran Bent ``Blondie'' Nielsen said.

Copenhagen lawyer Thorkild Hoeyer, who brokered the peace talks, said
that the two sides had for the moment agreed only that their members
would not attack each other but were considering merging into a
completely new group under a new name, with neither partner dominant.

``It is completely open, there is absolutely no decision yet,'' he told
a news conference on Friday.

He denied that the pact was ordered by the U.S. parent clubs, saying
that the initiative came from the Danes, worn down by tight police
restrictions and the worries of relatives frightened by the rising death
toll.

Sweden's Dagens Nyheter newspaper quoted Liberal parliamentarian Siv
Persson, a longtime antigang campaigner, as saying that the pact would
reduce the immediate threat to the public but in the longer term free up
resources for increased criminal activity.

Police and justice officials in the United States and Canada say that
the gangs there are traditionally involved in the drug trade
particularly amphetamine production, extortion and prostitution rings.

A Copenhagenbased diplomat who monitors biker activity agreed that the
gangs, believed to have a combined Nordic membership of about 600, were
a bigger threat to society at peace than they were at war.

``Where before there were two gangs killing each other we now have one
great super motorcycle gang, free to peddle drugs, women and weapons,''
he said.

Canadian gang researcher Yves Lavigne said last year that one reason for
intense biker activity in the Nordic region was its proximity to eastern
Europe and a thriving transBaltic barter of biker drugs for exSoviet
weapons.

The charge appeared to be supported by the discovery that the discarded
casing of a missile used in one Danish attack bore Warsaw Pact markings.

Danish detectives say that a large majority of individual bikers have
arrest records for a range of offences but investigators had so far not
been able to prove a central organisation.

A joint project begun last year with customs and treasury officials to
trace bikers cash flows has not yet borne fruit, they say.