The 600 cases of forced marriage dealt with by the Foreign Office in less than three years were only a fraction of the number of young girls who were victims, an MP has claimed.

Ann Cryer, who is at the forefront of the campaign to outlaw forced marriages, said she was dealing with dozens of similar cases a year.

Mrs Cryer, MP for Keighley, was commenting on the first international forum on the issue, which was held at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in London yesterday.

Delegates from 13 countries met to explore new ways of helping victims and identify new areas of research.

Mrs Cryer said: "We don't want more research, we want more action."

She has already won backing from the Government with the introduction of her call for an 18-year minimum age limit for people acting as sponsors for spouses.

But she wants the same minimum age for young people entering the country on marriage. She claims some are arriving aged as young as 15.

"But in the end it's down to the communities. It is up to secular and religious leaders to say this is unacceptable and parents who perpetuate a forced marriage on a daughter or son are behaving in an un-Islamic fashion.

"I hope the conference will shout loud and clear that this treatment is completely unacceptable.

"Myself, the Government and West Yorkshire police can bust a gut on this tinkering with the law and setting up refuges. But at the end of the day it is parents who are behaving in a disgraceful fashion, because girls are having to leave their families, friends and community to stop being forced to marry a man they don't want," she added.

Baroness Symons, FCO Minister with responsibility for consular affairs, said the FCO's community liaison unit had worked on 600 cases since October 2000, but many more went unreported. The meeting would help to raise awareness that everyone should enjoy the basic human right of freedom of choice in marriage, she said.

"This demonstrates that there is an increasing international recognition that forced marriage is an international human rights abuse and must be taken seriously," she said.