TRADE EXECUTIVE SAYS U.S. NEEDS TO TIGHTEN FOCUS ON CARGO SECURITY

TRADE EXECUTIVE SAYS U.S. NEEDS TO TIGHTEN FOCUS ON CARGO SECURITY    The United States should tighten its grip on its Southern borders which are vulnerable to security breaches from several countries and certain trade routes, a Colombian business executive told customs brokers and members of the trade community Tuesday.
   Gabriel Echavarria, president of Corona Enterprises Regional Trade Group, Cartagena, recommended that U.S. officials and trade executives seal their trade system to protect it from terrorists’ tampering.
   “The southern border of the U.S. is a very porous border,” he said. “It should be one of the areas to be secured against terrorist infiltration.”
      Living in Colombia, a country rife with drug activity, Echavarria has seen the dangers of drug trafficking in his lifetime. Terrorism and drug trafficking go hand in hand, since both activities are of a covert nature, he said. Terrorists often cross paths with drug traffickers, and this has been evident in Colombia and the surrounding countries of Ecuador, Brazil, Venezuela and Peru.
   “There is a war economy going on in the Amazon that has a direct effect on other cultures of the world,” he said. To emphasize the point, he said that the tools of terrorism have a more instant, direct impact when compared to drugs. “Twenty kilograms of C-4 is more dangerous than 20 kilograms of cocaine,” he said.
   Echavarria said drug seizures skyrocketed after the implementation of the Business Anti-Smuggling Coalition (BASC) in 1997. If this measure stopped drugs from flowing in the region, a similar model might do the same when applied to terrorism and terrorist smuggling activity, he said.
   Echavarria said the United States should also exercise great care in what it exports. He emphasized that the relationships between exporters and importers is important in this area, and that trade is of a reciprocal nature. “It is not just a one-way street. It goes two ways: and it can come back to you.”