The United States government is continuing to push hard for transparency in the issue of ship ownership despite mounting opposition from some shipowners.

A leading US coastguard official told Lloyd's List that "the world has a need to know who has effective control of vessels."

Washington appears to have come down heavily against the views of shipowners who have described its proposals on the issue as unworkable and potentially counterproductive.

But in their growing effort to tackle the issue of international terrorism, both the Americans and many European Union governments are losing sympathy with shipowners' efforts to keep secret the issue of ownership.

The key issue for Western governments is for regulatory authorities to ensure that ships are owned and operated by legitimate businesses and are not a front either for criminal organisations or terrorists.

Critics say the issue of secrecy in shipownership has also prevented the bringing to justice of many unscrupulous owners.

Shipowners want the focus to be on vessel operators, not owners.

They have rejected the notion that making ownership details public will help counter terrorism.

They add that if a shipowner is involved with terrorism, he or she is unlikely to put it down on paper anyway.

Washington is also planning to introduce unilateral checks on seafarers if the industry fails to agree with new international rules for seafarer identity documents.

Critics have argued that extensive checks on crews are both impractical and open to abuse and that in some instances they could infringe on basic human rights.

But the US is insistent on much tougher security assessments of merchant seafarers following the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, checks on criminal records.

The British shipping union Numast has expressed its concern over the issue, saying that while some aspects of the US proposals on the maritime sector are welcome, the proposed checks on seafarers could contravene basic human rights as well as national data protection laws.

Numast has also expressed its concern over the new Seafarer Training and Certification Rules (STCW), which came into effect on February 1.

While an effective stay of execution on the issue has been agreed by the International Maritime Organisation for a number of countries, including Kenya and Tanzania, until August 1, there remain doubts that countries will even have enabled their seafarers to receive the STCW training by then.

The union reports that during the first six weeks of concentrated port checks to see who had got the certificate, in the UK alone, 619 ships were found not to have the correct documents.

From August 1, ships to which warning letters have been issued will be targeted for priority inspection and may be detained if there is further evidence of failure to meet the new standards.

Numast's national secretary Allan Graveson said the checks cast renewed doubt about the effectiveness of the revised STCW requirements in improving seafarer standards and he questioned whether full compliance could be secured before the August deadline.

Meanwhile, regular operators in the Europe to West African trade are not recovering their investments despite a recent increase in freight rates, according to the chairman of the French-based Bollore group.

Vincent Bollore said that recent increases had brought freight rates back to their 1996 levels but they were still a long way short of the level they had been in 1989.

"The prices are still low and I don't think that we or our competitors are earning sums which allow us to amortise the material we are putting in line," Mr Bollore said.