Forced marriages in Bradford are to be tackled as part of a new nationwide crackdown.

A specialist Home Office team to tackle the controversial issue is being officially launched by Home Secretary Charles Clarke.

The move has been praised by Keighley MP Ann Cryer who first raised the issue in the House of Commons in 1997.

She said cases of forced marriages came to light in the Bradford district every week, adding that so-called "honour killings" related to forced marriages were happening throughout the UK.

"There is one a week on average that MPs hear of and that is one too many - it's another life lost," she said.

"Today the Home Office and Foreign Office are finally coming up front and being honest about it that there is a problem we have to deal with. There will be no more dodging and diving."

The initiative will include guidelines encouraging teachers and college lecturers to be on the lookout for suspected cases. Government ministers are still considering creating a new criminal offence to deal with the problem of forced marriage.

Bradford North MP Terry Rooney said he dealt with 20 to 25 cases of forced marriages in his constituency every year and already labelled it as criminal.

"They are illegal, they are effectively putting women into situations where they are being raped," he said.

Last October, officials said a special unit within the Foreign Office had dealt with almost 1,000 cases of forced marriage since it was set up in 2000.

It had also rescued and repatriated to the UK about 200 young people from overseas, they added.

The new unit - with six staff - will bring together functions of the Foreign Office and the Home Office. Most cases of forced marriage originate from south Asia, but British officials have also seen examples from eastern Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

As part of the Metropolitan Police's national study of potential "honour" crimes, details were requested of four West Yorkshire murder cases which happened between 1996 and 2000.

The Metropolitan Police is now studying those cases in depth.

Other cases in Bradford include that of newly-wed Zafar Iqbal, 22, who was strangled in Raymond Street car park, West Bowling, last January after secretly marrying Rizwana Arif, whose family had promised her to a Pakistani cousin whom she did not want to marry.

The cousin's brother, Tariq Mahmood, and his friend Jahangir Mohammed, both from Oldham, were jailed for 19 years six months and 15 years respectively for conspiracy to murder.

In 1995, 20-year-old Bradford supermarket worker Tasleem Begum was the victim of a honour killing.

She refused to marry a Pakistani chosen by her family and was mown down by a car inside which was the brother of the chosen groom.

He fled to Pakistan. But upon returning to Britain he was arrested and eventually sentenced for manslaughter.