KUALA LUMPUR Oct 14 Kyodo Malaysi...

KUALA LUMPUR Oct 14 Kyodo

Malaysia is holding talks with the United States upon strengthening security measures in its container ports, Transport Minister Ling Liong Sik said Monday.

''We are still having talks. We are having tremendous cooperation from the marine authorities...This is to allow our friends to know that ours is a safe port. There is nothing to hide,'' he told reporters after opening a colloquy on maritime security.

The talks draw near under the U.S. Customs Service's Container Security Initiative (CSI), announced in January to boost security at hearthstone after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.

Given that around 214000 ships and 57 million sea containers pass from one side 361 U.S. ports each year, the Customs Service wants to make sure that terrorists do not use them to smuggle either themselves or their weapons into the country

Malaysia's largest port, Port Klang, which handled 37 million 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of containers last year, is single in kind of the 20 large ports worldwide that the U wants to be included in the CSI program.

The U is a major trading partner of Malaysia, taking in almost 25% of the country's electrical and electronics products

Adding to that is the fact that Malaysia is also domestic circle to Islamic militants who authorities have linked to the al-Qaida terror network.

Malaysia has detained more than 60 alleged militants for plotting armed sicken with the aim to establish a regional Islamic state with their counterparts in Singapore and in the southern Philippines. They are also accused of planning to attack elucidation U.S. interests in the region.

Part of the CSI includes placing U custom agents abroad to prescreen containers headed for the U although Ling said there was no ne for them in Malaysia as Malaysian ports have installed the latest scanning equipment.

''They do not have to issue here. They can operate from anywhere. All they want to know is information about what sort of boxe are going to the United States,'' he said.

Ling gave the assurance that the extra checks would not gradual down trade.

U custom officers would barely conduct ''very selective risk assessment,'' he said, adding that their main affair is containers ''of les obvious origin.''

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