[L-I] American Antiterror Inspections Will Begin at 3 European Ports

American Antiterror Inspections Will Begin at 3 European Ports
By MARLISE SIMONS


OTTERDAM, the Netherlands, June 28 - As part of its effort against terrorism,
the United States has secured permission to station specially trained American
customs officials in three large European ports in the coming weeks. The aim is
to learn more about cargo heading for the United States and to screen sea
containers for possible weapons of mass destruction, a United States Customs
Service spokesman said.

The agreement, announced here this week, will first involve the ports of
Rotterdam in the Netherlands, Antwerp in Belgium, and Le Havre in France. Talks
are under way with five other European ports, in Germany, Italy and Spain. A
similar arrangement is already in place in Canada with the ports of Halifax,
Montreal and Vancouver.

Eventually, customs officials hope to extend the system to the 20 ports around
the world that send the largest volume of cargo to the United States. Those 20
ports, said the customs spokesman, Dean Boyd, jointly account for almost 70
percent of the 5.7 million containers shipped by sea to the United States each
year.

As part of the European agreement, American inspectors will be given access to
shipping manifests before vessels reach any of the three ports. If any part of
the cargo is deemed suspect, the containers will be scanned, inspected or even
unpacked by the local port authorities before heading to the United States.

The first five American inspectors will arrive in the coming weeks in Rotterdam,
the world's largest port, a Dutch official said. Rotterdam was the first
European harbor to agree to the arrangement, which was signed here on Tuesday by
Robert C. Bonner, commissioner of the United States Customs Service. Belgium
signed on to it on Wednesday, and France today.

A spokeswoman for Dutch customs, Renée Wesdorp, said Rotterdam's port had its
own system of risk analysis for the more than 400 million containers that pass
through in a year. But that system will now be expanded by the efforts of the
American inspectors, who bring their own computer database to the task.

"We're basically fine-tuning the system," Ms. Wesdorp said. "We'll start with a
six-month pilot project and then see if it's useful to continue."

Security experts say the American inspection campaign, however broad-based it
may become, is only a small step in the very large effort to prevent terrorism.
But spot scanning, while perhaps comparable to searching for the proverbial
needle in a haystack, has proved its benefits in the past, said Tie Schellekens,
spokesman for the Rotterdam port. In just their random checks, Rotterdam customs
officials find 500 to 600 containers a year that hold hidden weapons, drugs,
forbidden chemicals, cigarettes and other smuggled goods.

People have also been found. In October, Italian customs discovered an Egyptian
man suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda in a container bound for Canada. The
police said at the time that he had false identity documents and maps of various
airports with him.


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Macdonald Stainsby
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--
In the contradiction lies the hope.
                                     --Bertholt Brecht




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