The maritime industry has done little to improve security since the Sept 11 attacks while cooperation among governments on security is still lacking, analysts and a senior Malaysian official said on Monday.

Maritime expert and Emeritus Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ernst Frankel, said the industry was dragging its feet, put off by the cost of additional security measures.

"It basically assumes an ostrich kind of policy. It puts its head in the sand and says, as long as our authorities don't require us to do things, we won't do them," he told AFP on the sidelines of the 4th Asia Maritime and Logistics conference here.

Frankel said rivalries between governments also meant advanced technology for measures such as scanning containers was not shared, and called on them to increase cooperation to thwart attacks which could cripple world trade.

"We only need one serious accident with container contents, with toxic or explosive material," he said.

"Even if it doesn't do any damage, if it's discovered, it would immediately affect container shipping, because the rules would be changed instantly."

Searching every container after an attack would add some 10 to 15 percent to the cost of container shipping, or cost companies an extra 5 to 10 billion dollars annually, he said.

"We have to take these things much more seriously than we did in the past," said Frankel.

Multilateral initiatives

Maritime industry representatives from over 30 countries are participating in the two-day conference to consider challenges to the trade including geopolitical and security issues.

In a keynote address to the conference, Malaysia's transport minister Chan Kong Choy called for greater multilateral cooperation on cargo security and warned countries against unilateral initiatives.

"There seems to be a void in international technical standards in tagging technology and for screening cargo," he said.

"In particular we need multilateral initiatives that come not only with stronger mandate but with greater uniformity in application standards," he said.

"Unilateral efforts will create new problems for ports, shipping lines and the entire logistics chain."