Flag of convenience ships face more scrutiny

Troublesome ships flying blacklisted flags of convenience (FOC) could be banned from entering European waters under new regulations being proposed by one of the world's leading maritime safety bodies.

FOC nations, such as Panama and Boliva, provide shipowners flying their flags with a comfortable commercial and regulatory environment in return for hard cash.

But the Paris Memorandum of Understanding on Port State Control (Paris MOU), which is responsible for inspecting ships in 13 European Union countries as well as Canada and Russia, is poised to adopt a much stricter monitoring regime.

The tougher laws aim to target rogue ships and notorious flag states that continue to defy international laws of the sea.

"We are adding more teeth to the set we already have," Paris MOU general secretary Richard Schiferli told Reuters.

"We are taking more action on bad flags... Ships with multiple detentions may be banned from the region," said Schiferli, speaking from The Hague.

The Paris MOU already publishes an annual blacklist of foreign ships and flags falling foul of its strict maritime safety and pollution rules.

Top of the list in this year's report, just published and listing detentions for 2001, are the flags of Albania, Bolivia, Sao Tome and Principe, Honduras and Algeria.

Under the stricter procedures due to come into force in July 2003, ships deemed sub-standard and belonging to the "very high" and "high" risk groups at the top of the flag blacklist will be banned if they are detained twice in the previous three years.

Ships from flags in the "medium and medium to high" risk category will be banned from the region after their third detention over a two-year period, Schiferli said.

The regulations will affect oil, petrochemical and gas tankers, dry-bulk carriers and passenger ships.

The clampdown on the scourge of corrupt flags and their fleet of ships comes as yet another rogue freighter, this time Cambodian-flagged, hits the headlines after it was held for attempting to smuggle tonnes of cocaine on the high seas.

That incident in mid-June ended after months of surveillance with French marine commandos storming the vessel after a dramatic shoot out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

The seized ship, the Winner, arrived under military escort in the French port of Brest on Wednesday.

The ship's capture involved the elaborate cooperation of five governments, including the United States and Cambodia, and typifies a newly-found sense of urgency between countries eager to stamp out crime on the high seas.

The Winners' fate is only the latest in a string of high-profile incidents involving shadowy flag states.

In May the Pacific island of Tonga closed its registry after one of its ships was seized in the Red Sea carrying arms and explosives, which Israel said was bound for Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority.

But the war against tainted flags is wider than stamping out the trafficking of narcotics, arms and people or death-trap ships.

Across the Atlantic, the United States is extremely worried that some FOC pose a serious risk to national security in the aftermath of the events of September 11.

The US fears that one day it could receive a weapon of mass destruction, concealed in a shipping container and loaded overseas in a port with lax security.

In mid-June, a special hearing of Congress's Armed Services Committee on FOC and their implications for national security heard how US authorities had virtually no idea who owned certain registries or indeed who controlled them.

Testifying at the hearing on behalf of the US coast guard, Rear Admiral Paul Pluta said that 7,500 foreign-flagged ships originating from 92 different countries make around 51,000 port calls a year - representing over 90 per cent of commercial traffic into US ports.

Currently, ships arriving in the United States are required to report the name of the registered owner of the ship as well as the vessel operator.

"However, in many cases, the registered owner of the vessel is no more than a shell entity created solely for the purpose of being designated as a vessel owner, with no actual control of the vessel," Pluta said in his testimony.

"The need to know actual ownership is highlighted by recent media reports that Osama bin Laden covertly owns a shipping fleet and used a cargo ship in 1998 to deliver supplies that were used in the destruction of the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania," Pluta said.