House passes bill to make seaports more secure
WASHINGTON (AP) – The House acted Tuesday to make the nation’s 361 ports and 95,000 miles of open shoreline less vulnerable to terrorist attack. The port security bill, approved by voice vote, would create Coast Guard anti-terror teams to protect vessels and ports on U.S. waters and require the government to develop an identification and screening system for containerized cargo.
“A port is a likely target, and we have to accept that fact,” said Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, the House Transportation Committee chairman. “Lord only knows how much damage would occur” in an attack.
The nation’s sea and river ports handle 95 percent of U.S. international trade, but less than 2 percent of the containers unloaded at those ports are checked by Customs or other enforcement officials. Among the worries is that a hijacked tanker loaded with oil or explosives could be rammed into a port city.
The House bill would require all vessels entering the country’s 12-mile territorial sea to provide notice to the Coast Guard 96 hours before entering and would extend Coast Guard jurisdiction from three to 12 miles for certain security activities.
The Coast Guard could deny entry to any vessel arriving from a foreign port that fails to follow adequate anti-terror practices.
The legislation must be reconciled with a similar bill passed by the Senate last December, which would guarantee up to $3.3 billion in loans for ports to upgrade security. Customs also announced Tuesday that it will inspect U.S.-bound cargo containers in Singapore’s seaport, part of its effort to prevent terrorists from smuggling nuclear and other weapons into the United States.
Customs said the agreement would allow U.S. inspectors to screen cargo out of one of the busiest ports in the world.
The agency considers the agreement – the second of its kind – crucial to ongoing efforts to improve the security of cargo entering U.S. seaports. Customs currently has inspectors at three Canadian seaports. Details of the Singapore arrangement, including when inspectors would be installed there, still have to be worked out, Customs officials said.
In an interview with The Associated Press last week, Customs Commissioner Robert Bonner said he hopes to have similar arrangements worked out in the coming months with other countries, possibly including Japan, France, Germany and the Netherlands.
Concerns about cargo security have intensified since the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington.
With roughly 6 million cargo containers entering U.S. seaports each year, Bonner said it is critically important to ensure that terrorists don’t use the containers to smuggle themselves or their weapons into the country.
Last year, roughly 330,000 cargo containers entered the United States from the port of Singapore, Customs said.
Under a recent agreement with Canada, Customs has put inspectors in Montreal, Halifax and Vancouver. Canadian Customs officials have inspectors at some U.S. seaports.
Transportation Department officials announced Tuesday that they had successfully tested electronic seals that indicate if a cargo container has been tampered with. The seals would be read at checkpoints and border crossings. Customs Service inspectors in Vancouver participated in the project.
Since Sept. 11, Customs has shifted its primary mission from detecting smuggled narcotics to stopping terrorists and weapons from getting into the country.
Specifically, Customs has increased security and provided better training for its inspectors and agents at seaports, airports and border crossings on land. Customs oversees roughly 300 points of entry into the United States.
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