A Paris judge has ordered independent experts to investigate how to bar French web surfers from tapping into online sales of Nazi memorabilia on websites accessed using the giant Internet portal Yahoo.

Judge Jean-Jacques Gomez said that over the next two months a French and two foreign experts should look into ways of implementing his three-month-old emergency ruling ordering Yahoo to block the US-based sites which are barred under French law.

The judge rejected one of Yahoo's main contentions, which was that the English-language Yahoo.com site was outside the competence of the French court.

He set a new hearing for November 6th.

It was the second time he had sought expert advice in the case brought against Yahoo by the Paris-based International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA), the Union of French Jewish Students (UEJF) and the Movement against Racism (MRAP).

Yahoo has argued that it is technically impossible to block French Internet users from websites governed by less restrictive American laws which advertise hundreds of Nazi items such as daggers and uniforms.

Meanwhile, the German arm of US Internet firm America Online announced yesterday that it had removed a neo-Nazi website from its servers.

AOL removed the website on Thursday night because it was "anti-democratic and hostile to foreigners", a company spokesman said. The site, "Union for All of Germany," told visitors that "German people should protect themselves from intruders in its living space".

It is the second website this week to be blocked in Germany for expressing extreme-right views. A website with the address www.heil-hitler.de was banned on Tuesday after intervention by Germany's federal Justice Minister, Herta Dubler-Gmelin.

"I've looked at the guidelines and we can pull these things if there's a clear violation of the law," she said. The man suspected of setting up and registering the site was suspended from his job in the German army on Thursday, a spokesperson for the defence ministry said.

Neo-nazis in Germany have long been suspected of using the Internet to distribute extremeright hate propaganda, but this week was the first time sites have been banned.