Posted on 01/06/2004 3:14:43 AM PST by kattracks
Portugal has joined Denmark and Sweden in rejecting US calls to post armed guards on international flights.The country's civil aviation authority said that putting loaded guns aboard an aircraft could endanger it.
A better course would be to cancel any flight against which there was a credible terrorist threat, it argued.
The decision means that plans to have armed guards, known as sky marshals, on board US-bound planes have now been rejected by three countries.
While the US has introduced new checks at home, its efforts to tighten security on flights to the US as well have met with strong opposition.
The director of Portugal's National Civil Aviation Institute, Joaquim Carvalho, told the AFP news agency: "We will not authorise loaded guns on Portuguese planes, therefore we will not allow armed guards."
He added: "If there is specific information about a particular flight which justifies having armed guards on board, what we would consider is cancelling the flight."
Pilots hostile
Elsewhere, the UK Government's announcement that it would put armed marshals on some flights "where appropriate" has drawn a hostile response from airlines and pilots.
British Airways has expressed concerns about having armed guards on board aircraft, while the holiday airline Thomas Cook has said it will ground any flights on which sky marshals are placed.
The British pilots' union, Balpa, says that if the security risk to a flight is great enough to warrant an armed guard, it should not fly at all.
Balpa is calling for an emergency world summit of airline pilots to consider the US demand for sky marshals.
In the meantime, the union is to have talks with the UK Government on Tuesday to discuss the issue.
Brazil has begun fingerprinting and photographing US citizens flying into its airports, apparently in retaliation for new security measures at US airports.
The Brazilian move came as the stringent new US regulations, affecting most tourists, were introduced.
Everyone entering the United States with a visa will now have fingerprints and photographs taken and scrutinised.
People on the visa waiver scheme - such as tourists from much of Europe, Japan and Australia - are not yet affected, but those on work visas are.
Exactly, they could care less about hard evidence and science, what they only want is to go with the imagined suspicion of danger of the gun. They take other forms of security for granted and they provide stupid alibis for justifying inaction and going on strike.
Yep, I trust the NCO in Iraq to tell me the truth, not the UN diplomats or desk drivers at the intel service of Spain and all.
Done, Mateuse notwithstanding...
What are you smoking? If we had waited a year, it never would have happened. With all the opposition from the French and Germans, and the fifth column media in the U.S., the political pressure to assume that we had "won the war" and put our heads in the sand would have been overwhelming. Bush and his administration were brilliant to push the war when they did. It was the only realistic strategic and political choice.
Terrorism comes from the middle east, specifically Saudi Arabia and Iran. Taking Iraq into our camp alters the situation from a gradually deteriorating one for us to one with a strong chance of improvement over time.
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