US Navy sailors may board thousands of commercial ships in international waters to search for weapons of mass destruction under a landmark pact between the US and Liberia, the world's No. 2 shipping registry.
This week's accord -- which could become a model as Washington seeks other similar two-country deals -- comes amid persistent fears that terror networks might use ships for attacks, taking advantage of comparatively lax security on the seas.
With the pact -- the first of its kind, according to US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher -- US forces now may board and search any of more than 2,000 Liberian-registered foreign ships suspected of carrying weapons of mass destruction, their delivery systems, or related material.
"It's based on the need to stop the proliferation in weapons of mass destruction and means to deliver them," Boucher said Friday in Washington.
"With this accord, the US and its allies can feel more secure, and our ships can feel more secure under the US security umbrella," Yoram Cohen, head of Liberia's shipping registry, said in a statement. Liberia, which is emerging from nearly 15 years of civil war, has hosted a US-based shipping registry since 1949.
It ranks second to Panama in total shipping tonnage in US ports, under so-called "flags of convenience" that offer cheap fees and lax regulations.
One-third of oil imported to the US arrives on Liberian-flagged tankers.
With commercial ships transporting 80 percent of the world's traded goods, security experts worry that vessels, ports and other links in the maritime economic chain might make very tempting targets.
A terrorist attack could sink a ship, cripple a port, panic markets and disrupt world trade.
Suicide attacks killed 17 sailors on the US destroyer USS Cole in Yemen in 2000 and a crewman on the French oil tanker Limburger off Yemen's coast in 2002.
Terrorists tried to attack another US destroyer before succeeding against the Cole.
Authorities in Singapore and Morocco have recently foiled similar plots.
Explosives used to blow up two US embassies in Africa in 1998 and a nightclub in Bali in 2002 also allegedly were brought in by ships.
In October, British and US authorities intercepted a shipment of nuclear components bound for Libya on a German freighter, helping prod Libya to reveal -- and renounce -- its nuclear weapons program in December.
Without the US-Liberia pact, Liberian-flagged ships carrying suspect materials had to be shown to be breaking international law, or enter US waters.
Otherwise, the US had no authority to act unilaterally, experts say.
If the US Navy wanted to interdict a ship flying a foreign flag, it had to work through diplomatic channels with the government where the ship is registered.
The process was unwieldy and time-consuming.
The registry said US authorities still must contact it before boarding any vessel.
Shipping industry analysts say that the US already was stopping and searching vessels on the high seas at will.
"It puts existing practice on a friendlier footing," said David Osler of the respected Lloyd's List shipping daily. "The US Navy will continue to board vessels when they want to. But at least in the case of Liberia, they'll be able to do it legally."
"It's following the path that the US has been following for a while of setting up bilateral agreements rather than going through the painful process of reaching a multilateral agreement," said Chris Austen, head of the London-based Maritime and Underwater Security Consultants.
Even with the deal, the US military doesn't have the manpower to guard all the world's waters, shipping experts said.
"If (the US) wants to be the policeman of the high seas, they can be," Osler said. "But even they haven't got the reach."
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