Airports need best security

       It is difficult to follow the reasoning of Democrat MP Pichet Panwichartkul and supporters who want to relax security screening at Suvarnabhumi airport. Mr Pichet considers airport security an inconvenience. His proposal to reduce the amount of pre-flight security checking is not just a one-off trial balloon. He seems quite serious about pressing ahead.Thank goodness for security and airport officials who have politely acknowledged the member of parliament's pressure without trying to appease him.
       Mr Pichet is neither a lightweight politician nor given to fantasy. A former finance minister, he is intimately familiar with the day-to-day running of the country.More to the point, he is also a former transport minister,known during his time in office to take a particular interest in the nation's airports. It is surprising he has come up with such a zany idea on airport security, even more so because it casts the country in a bad light.
       Airport security is not an airport issue or even a national one. Countries around the globe constantly discuss, update and agree on what measures will be used to screen passengers. This cross-border cooperation ensures that officials at Suvarnabhumi, say, know that arriving passengers from all over the world have undergone the same security checks. Obviously, foreign security personnel have to know the same about travellers arriving from Thailand.
       This is not a glib subject. Airline hijackings are real,airport terrorism exists. Intelligence work and international cooperation are key elements in the prevention of terrorism in the air. But airport security - worldwide measures applied to all flights - are the key preventative measure to deter would-be terrorists.
       Mr Pichet, of all people, should know that if an airport becomes a weak link, it will be a target for terrorists. If Suvarnabhumi Airport relaxes its security standards it will become a magnet for cross-border criminals, traffickers and terrorists. In 1988, terrorists detected just such a weak link at Don Mueang Airport. They hijacked a Kuwait Airways 747 in a murderous flight that lasted 16 days. The terrorists managed to smuggle guns aboard the plane while it was being refuelled. It is because of just such local failings that countries have joined together to close security holes.
       The member of parliament has focussed on the nowfamiliar demand of security staff for passengers to remove their belts and pass them through X-ray machines.Security should know the difference between suspicious and non-suspicious belts, he claims. And he is apparently outraged that the travellers have to "clumsily" put their belts back on after passing the security check. The former minister must know that belts are a possible hiding place of weapons that cannot easily be found with a metal detector. In a phrase, all belts are suspicious to security personnel. So are outer jackets, which also must go through the X-ray process for screening.
       Mr Pichet has a point that flying has become less glamorous, more demanding and sometimes stressful.Security checks are inconvenient. They are not, however,nearly so inconvenient as a hijacking, a bomber or a madman in a sealed aircraft cabin running amok with weapons he has smuggled aboard. The alternative to stiff airport security checks is insecurity. Nor is there any plausible case to be made for excepting important people such as government MPs from these checks.Flights can be certified as reasonably safe only if every passenger and crew member is carefully inspected. Mr Pichet is a people's representative in a country with many problems, one of which is definitely not too much security at the main international airport.