15 November 2004

Coast Guard issues latest noncompliant country list

The following message is excerpted from the 15 November 2004 edition of “American Shipper”.

The U.S. Coast Guard has released its latest port security advisory, listing countries that have not provided the Coast Guard or the International Maritime Organization (IMO) with data regarding port facility security compliance.

The nations not having doing so are: Albania, Benin, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Madagascar, Mauritania and Nauru.

“Failure to submit the requested information… leads us to believe there are inadequate antiterrorism measures in place at port facilities in these countries,” the Coast Guard said….

As a result, vessels that visited any the nine countries listed above during their last five port calls will be subject to increased port state control actions upon arrival at a U.S. port.

Since Oct. 1, the date of its last advisory, the Coast Guard said the following nations provided the required security information, and have been removed from its noncompliant nation list: Kiribati, Serbia and Montenegro, Sierra Leone, the Solomon Islands, and Suriname….