The United States coast guard, accused of failing to secure sea access to the US, is to dispatch inspectors to more than 100 international ports to monitor new anti-terror measures, officials said this week.
The inspection regime was outlined in a week when Americans’ notions of safety were again severely challenged by specific threats to New York and Washington.
Coast guard officials said on Wednesday that inspectors would visit quays, engine rooms and warehouses to ensure that sensitive areas were cordoned off and adequate surveillance systems were in place.
The move marks the US’s most comprehensive effort to date to overhaul security at coastal areas and seaports. But it is unlikely to satisfy security analysts, who have been scathing about the lack of funds and government commitment to securing US ports.
In the book America the Vulnerable, published last month by Harper Collins, retired coast guard commander Stephen Flynn argues that Washington has done too little to improve port security since the terror attacks of September 11 2001.
He warns that it remains relatively easy to smuggle weapons of mass destruction into the US in cargo containers and that ports such as Los Angeles remain tempting targets for terrorists seeking to disrupt economic activity.
”There are 361 commercial seaports in this country. And the CIA has said that the most likely way in which a weapon of mass destruction would come to the United States is by sea.
”And the United States has spent close to $500-million on grants in three years to help those seaports get more secure, which may sound a lot of money to many Americans,” Flynn told NPR radio last month.
”But that’s what we’re spending every three days in Iraq.”
The US coast guard acknowledged some of those concerns this week, and said the inspection regime represented a first step to reform.
”Before September 11 2001, security when it came to shipping was somewhat a secondary concern and it was mostly dealing with security from theft,” said Lieutenant Commander Jeff Carter, spokesperson for the coast guard.
”Now we realise that there are vulnerabilities that exist in ports, and we have been very aggressive in working with industry partners to make sure these are adequately addressed.”
The security regime now taking place at the world’s ports was agreed under the auspices of the United Nations and went into effect last month.
Carter said about two-thirds of states conducting sea trade with the US had met the deadline for adopting the regime. For those lagging behind, the penalty is a ban on sea trade with the US.
In the first two weeks of July, the coast guard turned back two dozen ships which failed to comply. — Â