US lobbies to station more customs officials at China ports

[AGENDA21]

BEIJING (AFX) - The United States is lobbying China to allow more US customs officials to be stationed at Chinese ports, US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said.

Chertoff, on an Asian tour that also includes Japan and Singapore, said the United States would like to station customs officials in more Chinese ports than the current two, Shanghai and Shenzhen.

'The more containers originating in China that we can screen and inspect here, the more will be able to pass through our ports in the US without having to be inspected in the US,' he told reporters at the end of his Beijing visit.

'That ultimately benefits not only our security in the US, but it benefits China's ports because those ports then become kind of green-lane ports to move cargo more quickly, so that gives China a competitive advantage,' he said, according to Agence France-Presse.

http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2006/04/04/afx2644640.html