CHINA JOINS U.S. CUSTOMS? CONTAINER SECURITY INITIATIVE

CHINA JOINS U.S. CUSTOMSÆ CONTAINER SECURITY INITIATIVE    The Chinese government has agreed in principle to participate in U.S. Customs’ Container Security Initiative.
   U.S. Customs announced the program in January. CSI is designed to enhance the security of container shipping. About 48 million full containers move among the world’s top seaports and about half of the value of all U.S. imports arrive in containers.
   “We will be working with the appropriate Chinese government officials to implement the program as quickly as possible,” said U.S. Customs Commissioner Robert C. Bonner. “This is an important step, not only for the protection of trade between the U.S. and China, but for the protection of the most critical component of the world trading system as a whole — containerized cargo.”
   A major element of CSI involves placing U.S. Customs inspectors at foreign seaports to screen U.S.-bound cargo containers before they are shipped to the United States.
   “U.S. Customs officials, working with their foreign counterparts, would be in a position to detect weapons of mass destruction and other instruments of terror at these foreign ports,” the agency said.
   U.S. Customs has decided to focus CSI first on the 20 largest overseas seaports, which account for about 68 percent of the 5.7 million sea containers entering the United States each year. So far, about a dozen Asian and European countries have signed on to participate in CSI pilots.