Sorry - I missed the final part of the article. Here 'tis.
Restoring NATO’s credibility
With NATO’s credibility undermined by its member countries’ differences over Iraq and their failure to provide adequate troops to pacify Afghanistan, the alliance’s leaders will be keen to demonstrate that NATO still has a valuable role to play in the 21st century. The co-ordination of international anti-terrorism efforts should be part of that role. Hence the package of measures to be discussed at the summit, which includes protecting ports and shipping from surface and sub-surface terrorist threats.
NATO has already begun joint anti-terrorism naval patrols in the Mediterranean Sea including the boarding of suspect vessels and escorting vulnerable shipping through the Gibraltar straits. On Thursday, the alliance’s secretary-general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said Russia and Ukraine will be invited to join these patrols. NATO wants to extend them to the Black Sea, which is at risk from terror groups from the Caucasus, Central Asia and elsewhere.
America is also pressing other countries to sign up to its container-security initiative, launched four months after the September 11th 2001 attacks. Under this scheme, containers bound for America are screened in their port of departure. On Thursday, Greece became the 18th country to sign up, ahead of this summer’s Olympic games. American security officials will be deployed in Greece’s main port, Piraeus, to help identify and check suspect containers.
America and its allies are also urging countries adjacent to vulnerable shipping lanes, especially the Malacca strait, to step up their patrols. Next week, the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) will discuss Indonesia’s proposals to form a NATO-style security community, which among other things would increase co-operation on maritime patrols. However, relations between many of the region’s governments are prickly and it will not be easy to persuade them to work together. Furthermore, Indonesia itself has faced much criticism for failing to give its navy and coastguard the resources to police adequately its side of the Malacca strait. Rankled by such criticism, the Indonesian navy’s chief of staff promised earlier this month to introduce a shoot-to-kill policy against pirates and terrorists in its waters.
Since almost all of China’s oil imports go through the Malacca strait, it might be expected to show some willingness to help finance better patrolling of the waterway. But so far it has proved reluctant to do so, claiming it cannot afford to. Adequate patrolling of the world’s most vulnerable shipping lanes would indeed be costly. The new security requirements being imposed on ports and shipping lines are also proving expensive, which is why so many are dragging their feet on complying with them. But the cost of a terrorist attack that succeeds in disrupting world trade—especially in oil—could be colossal.
