January 4, 2002	Friday	Shawwal 19, 1422

LOS ANGELES, Jan 3: In a high-tech effort to tighten up on illegal infiltrators, officials at US airports and other border crossings will begin to match visitors with the digital photos taken when they applied for US entry visas, the Los Angeles Times reported on Wednesday.

The report said the government is also considering plans to encode US visas with personal data such as digitized fingerprints or images of the retina that can be read electronically. The information would also be required on the national passports of the 29 countries, mostly from Western Europe, for which the United States has waived most visa requirements.

According to the newspaper, the State Department will start later this month to relay digital images of foreign travellers to US ports of entry to allow immigration officials to compare travellers to authentic pictures taken when the travellers applied to visit the United States.

The impetus to tighten screening procedures was the uncertainty over the identity of the man now identified as Richard Reid, who is accused of trying to blow up a plane last month with explosives hidden in his shoe, the report said.

The inclusion of biometric technologies in US travel documents and the passports of foreign nationals is seen as the best way to prevent potential terrorists from gaining entry to the country using stolen or forged documents.

The paper said US officials were already coordinating efforts with the European Union and Germany, which is also considering whether to encode passports with details of a traveller’s unique hand geometry or fingerprints, and is not expected to oppose a US mandate for biometric passports.

“Germany is moving in the same direction as the United States is planning to do,” said Hinrich Thoelken, a spokesman for the German Embassy in Washington.

An official with the European Commission office in Washington said European nations would need more information about any biometric requirements that Congress has in mind but added: “The (European Union) and the United States have a lot of contact on these issues. ... We’re making improvements all the time.”—dpa