- US-led efforts to improve the security of global shipping
have illustrated starkly that the maritime industry is "wide open"
to the threat from terrorism, experts say.
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- The US State Department issued a new warning on September
26 of "increasing indications that al-Qaeda is preparing to strike
US interests abroad" and that these may involve "aircraft and
maritime interests".
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- However, in a wide-ranging report issued this week, the
RAND think-tank criticised the lack of focus on shipping security, in part
due to the concentration on airline security since the September 11 2001
terrorist attacks in the US.
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- "Ultimately, this means that the marine sector -
and specifically the container transport sector - remains wide-open to
the terrorist threat," the RAND report said.
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- Concerns about the safety of shipping emerged when intelligence
services seeking to dismantle the al-Qaeda network established that the
terrorist group may have use of up to 20 ships across the world, none of
which has yet been identified.
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- A US-led strategy, called the Proliferation Security
Initiative (PSI), aims to confront the transport by ship of material that
could be used in WMD production and in which "there is a thriving
black market, which we hope to substantially reduce", a senior US
official said yesterday.
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- Eleven countries have joined the PSI, and their armed
forces are this month engaged in joint exercises intended to form co-ordinated
strategies for intercepting suspect vessels.
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- This focus on shipping security as an aspect of the George
W. Bush administration's aim of halting WMD proliferation and denying so-called
"rogue states" access to WMD material, follows the introduction
of pre- export shipping container checks by US officials based in foreign
ports in response to concerns that terrorists might pack containers bound
for the US with explosives.
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- However, the measures taken so far are criticised in
the RAND report: "Initiatives have been started, budgets have been
raised and a few co-ordinated counter-measures have been put into place...
[But] so far there has not been one single stakeholder who can clearly
be identified as being responsible for implementing counter measures...
Both in the United States as well as in Europe there is a distinct lack
of awareness of the threat."
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- The failure to find the ships allegedly linked to al-Qaeda,
as well as the absence of substantial proof that terrorists intend to use
containers as mobile bombs, is seen as having created this lack of awareness.
"But it is reasonable to worry about containers as a clandestine means
of delivery," Brian Jenkins, a terrorism specialist, said recently.
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- Evidence of al-Qaeda's interest in ships has so far been
limited to its use of small speedboats laden with explosives to ram targets.
On October 12 2000, the USS Cole was attacked using this method, killing
17 sailors. A year later, a French oil tanker was similarly attacked.
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- Al-Qaeda plans to attack US and UK navy ships in the
Straits of Gibraltar using boat-bombs were also exposed last year when
the plotters were caught in Morocco.
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- Since the September 11 attacks, Spanish and German ships
have been responsible for patrolling the seas around the southern Arabian
peninsula and the north-east African coast, which are regarded as possible
transit routes for terrorists and weapons.
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- While numerous ships have been tracked, the controversial
boarding by Spanish forces last December of a North Korean ship carrying
a legitimate cargo of 15 Scud missiles to Yemen provoked anger from Yemen
and led to the ship and its cargo being released.
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- North Korea was also a target in August, when Taiwan
halted a ship bound there with a cargo of phosphorous pentasulfide, which
can be used in the production of chemical weapons. The cargo was forcibly
off-loaded before the ship was allowed to continue.
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- © Copyright The Financial Times Ltd 2003.
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