AMSTETTEN, Austria (AFP) - An Austrian accused of keeping his daughter as a sex slave for 24 years insisted Wednesday he is "no monster", as residents of his town staged a rally in support of the victims.

The rally, held in the town square, aimed to show solidarity with the woman and her children, but also to remind residents that they "as a community, did not fail", said spokesman Hermann Gruber.

In the meantime, while the government in Vienna agreed to take a tougher line on sex crimes, Josef Fritzl, in comments passed by his lawyer to the tabloid newspaper Oesterreich insisted he was "no monster."

Fritzl, 73, claimed credit for having saved the life of his daughter and added: "I could have killed them all. Then there would have been no trace. No-one would have found me out."

Prosecutors interviewing the suspect for the first time since his arrest at the beginning of last week said they found Fritzl to be "cooperative" and "ready to talk".

Prosecution spokesman Gerhard Sedlacek said the interview with investigating prosecutor Christiane Burkheiser in St. Poelten prison where Fritzl is being held, lasted "about one and a half hours" during which Fritzl was not yet questioned directly about the accusations.

"The interview focussed on his personal history, his professional career, et cetera," the spokesman said.

In the comments published by Oesterreich, Fritzl claimed he had saved the life of the eldest of the six surviving children born from the sexual abuse.

Nineteen-year-old Kerstin, who was born in the cramped dungeon where Fritzl held his daughter prisoner and was never allowed out, was rushed to hospital on April 19 with multiple organ failure, which doctors suggest could be a result of her incarceration.

She has since been in an artificially-induced coma and put on a life-support machine.

It was Kerstin's hospitalisation that triggered the events which led to the discovery of the shocking abuse case. But Fritzl said: "If it weren't for me, Kerstin wouldn't be alive today."

He added: "It was me who made sure she was taken to hospital."

Police say the retired electrician has admitted that he locked away his daughter Elisabeth, now 42, when she was just 18 and repeatedly raped her, forcing her to bear seven children in all.

Three children remained incarcerated with their mother, three were legally adopted by Fritzl and taken to live as his "grandchildren" in the family home upstairs. The seventh child died shortly after birth.

The case has sparked widespread calls for tougher punishment for rapists and paedophiles.

On Wednesday, the government cabinet promptly agreed a package of measures to combat sex crime, which will come into force next year if adopted.

They included keeping criminal records of convicted sex offenders on file for much longer, banning convicted sex criminals from carrying out certain professions, and not allowing them to adopt children.

Under current Austrian law, criminal records are expunged after no longer than 15 years, depending on the severity of the crime.

The Fritzl case has raised questions about the practice after reports suggested the 73-year-old had been convicted of sex crimes back in the 1960s, but those convictions had since been wiped from his record.

When police carried out routine background checks on Fritzl when he reported his daughter missing 24 years ago, his record was technically clean, as it was when he applied to adopt three of the children born out of the abuse.

Under the new proposals, the time period will now be extended to 30 years for sex offenders and serious offences would no longer be wiped at all, Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer said.

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