Brussels, 04/11/2002 (Agence Europe) - During his first visit as personal advisor to President Bush, the man in charge of national security in the USA, Tom Ridge met with Commissioners Antonio Vitorino, Fritz Bolkestein and Loyola de Palacio on Monday and Tuesday. He also met CFSP High Representative, Javier Solana and NATO leaders and discussed a range of "very specific" subjects on co-operation on terrorism. Following "very, very important discussions" with Mr Bolkestein, who is expected in Washington in December, Mr Ridge hoped that a principled declaration on strengthening and extending port inspections could be finalised by the end of the year. He also believed that the Europeans understood that "we are moving forward aggressively" in order to optimise security and strengthen the weak points against terrorism , while taking on board the Europeans desire for integrating the maximum number of European ports in the containers security initiative, which for the present only covers 20 main European ports. Both Europeans and Americans are now going to focus on "a series of principles allowing for other ports to be included", indicated Mr Ridge, who also added that they had to sit down with their partners in order to sort this matter out. However, Mr Ridge also provided assurances that those who did not participate in the exercise or who did not sign the protocol would not necessarily be excluded from transatlantic trade and that the idea was to optimise security and not compromise trade. "We are not about disqualifying or penalising ports that do not do it" (strengthening controls of cargoes to the USA: Editor's note), he explained, stressing that there would, however, be an advantage in guaranteeing validation procedures were carried out before loading goods onto US soil.
In the context of security at Trans-Atlantic airports, Mr Ridge indicated that discussions had to be continued, particularly on information considered as confidential by Europeans on passengers going to the USA.