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Argentina Joins U.S. Container Security Initiative
The Argentine port at Buenos Aires has become the 41st port to join the U.S. Container Security Initiative, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection service announced last week (see GSN, April 29). Cargo heading to the United States from Buenos Aires will now be screened for weapons of mass destruction or other materials that could be used by terrorists, the agency said in a press release. “CSI is a way of addressing the threat to global trade making it more secure against terrorist exploitation, and Argentina was the first South American country to agree to participate,” CBP Commissioner Robert Bonner said in the release. His agency “will continue to cast out the CSI security blanket to additional foreign ports.” Ports in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and North and South America now participate in the effort. Roughly 75 percent of U.S.-bound cargo move through those facilities. Customs and Border Protection plans to increase the number of CSI ports to 50 by the end of next year, the press release states. That would raise the screening level of all trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific containers heading toward the United States to 90 percent (U.S. Customs and Border Protection press release, Nov. 17). Bonner in September announced that he would leave Customs and Border Protection after leading the agency for four years. “I moved back to Washington on Sept. 10, 2001, and I’ve been going a mile a minute since the morning of 9/11,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “I believe I have accomplished a lot here, but that’s for others to judge. I do need a change.” Bonner developed the Container Security Initiative and the Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism, which studies the chain of supply of foreign materials. “America is better protected, and I can say that without any equivocation,” he said. “We are better than we’ve ever been in terms of preventing terrorist operatives or weapons from entering the United States.” The former federal judge and Drug Enforcement Administration chief said he might again become a private-practice attorney (Ricardo Alonso-Zalvidar, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 28). Bonner is expected to depart this month, the Washington Times reported (Jerry Seper, Washington Times, Nov. 16).
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