| CSI: Increased global participation
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At this writing, four nations have signed on to the Container Security Initiative (CSI): the Netherlands, France, Belgium, and Germany. These nations will allow U.S. Customs inspectors to prescreen United States-bound cargo at the ports of, respectively, Rotterdam, Le Havre, Antwerp, Bremerhaven, and Hamburg (both in Germany). Canada has been working with the United States to target high-risk containers since February. | Commissioner Robert Bonner speaks to the World Customs Organization in Brussels who unanimously passed a resolution in support of the Container security Initiative principles.
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Assistant Commissioner Donald Shruhan of the Office of International Affairs reports that "these cooperative efforts are the first steps to enhance the security of the global maritime container system."All five European ports are considered mega-ports, which are foreign ports that ship the greatest volume of containers to the United States. Of all the cargo containers that arrive in the United States each year, a significant percentage of them come from these five ports. Canada and the United States have a reciprocal agreement in which Canadian inspectors have been stationed at the ports of Newark and Seattle, while American Customs inspectors do preclearance work in Montreal, Vancouver, and Halifax. |
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