The United States has rebuffed an EU request to delay rolling out new high-security passports, the European Commission said on Friday, warning of long visa delays for millions of transatlantic tourists and executives.

The United States wants all 27 mostly European countries whose citizens do not need a visa to enter the US on a 90 day trip to issue new passports containing a computer chip with a digital photograph of the holder by October 25.

The EU will not be ready in time and to avoid lengthy visa application delays it asked Washington last month to extend the deadline to August 28, 2006.

"I must advise you that such an outcome is unlikely," the chairman of the US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner said in a letter to the EU, rebuffing the request.

"The increased awareness and concern, of both the American public and most members of Congress, regarding continued weakness in US border security, will make an additional extension difficult to accomplish," he added.

The letter from Sensenbrenner was dated March 31 and received by the European Commission early on Friday.

"We are... concerned and disappointed," Commission spokesman Friso Roscam Abbing told a daily news conference. "We felt we had a good set of arguments."

If no solution is found before October, European citizens would have to go through a very time consuming and cumbersome visa application process, he added.

The US tightened border controls after the September 11, 2001, attacks. It originally wanted visitors from the 27 visa-waiver countries to have passports with biometric data by October 2004 and is reluctant to grant a second extension.

Some EU countries -- including Austria, Ireland, Luxembourg, Slovenia and possibly Germany and Italy -- may meet the deadline for high-security passports.

The American travel industry has said the US economy could lose USD$10 billion to USD$15 billion a year if the visa waivers no longer apply.