Ships Of Fools

With great fanfare, the State Department recently signed an agreement with landlocked Mongolia that will allow Mongolian ships to be boarded and searched if they are suspected of carrying weapons of mass destruction.

This despite the fact that Mongolia -- a vast land that's home to the Gobi Desert, windswept steppes and largely populated by nomadic yak herders -- has no navy at all and lies thousands of miles from open waters. Asked what Washington hoped to achieve with the agreement, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said "I'll have to check," but stressed it was a key part of the "Proliferation Security Initiative" that aims to halt trade in nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

Although Mongolia has only 62 ships registered under the "flag" program, according to the latest edition of the CIA World Factbook -- putting it in 18th place -- officials said it is important to sign up as many countries as possible no matter how modest their fleet. The seven countries that had previously signed agreements account for nearly 10,000 registered ships and include the top three "flag of convenience" nations -- Panama, Liberia and Malta -- as well as Cyprus and the Marshall Islands, which are both in the top 10, according to the State Department.