US SENATE PANEL VOTES TO DELAY CANADIAN BORDER CHECK PROGRAM

By Richard Cowan

Thu Jun 29, 5:16 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Senate panel voted on Thursday to delay a post-September 11 border security program requiring passports or other high-tech IDs for everyone entering the United States following concerns about lagging technology and poor coordination with Canada.

The Senate Appropriations Committee unanimously approved the 17-month delay, until June 1, 2009, for fully implementing the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, said a lack of coordination among U.S. agencies and between Washington and Ottawa requires the postponement to avoid a "train wreck on the horizon."

After the September 11 attacks on the United States, the Bush administration moved to more closely check the millions of people who travel by land into the country, raising concerns that trade and tourism could suffer in North America.

For decades, people have freely crossed the 5,500-mile (8,900-km) U.S.-Canada border, often with no security checks.

U.S. and Canadian citizens entering the United States by land can show passports, drivers' licenses, birth certificates and hundreds of other forms of identification that local jurisdictions issue. Security experts prefer the use of passports for fear that other documents are easily forged.

By December 31, 2007, passports or high-tech border cards were supposed to be shown by everyone entering the United States.

But an aide to Leahy said that recent Bush administration briefings indicated those deadlines could not be met, as details about the security systems for identity cards and equipment to read those cards at border stations still had not been worked out.

Leahy's amendment was offered with Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, whose Alaska constituents worry about the impact of a new border security program as they have to pass through Canada to travel to the U.S. mainland.

The senators' amendment would require the United States to share "PASS Card" technology with the governments of Canada and Mexico. Otherwise, only half the problem is taken care of by the U.S. border security system, Leahy's aide said.

The plan to delay the new ID program also was included in a recently passed Senate immigration reform bill. But with that measure's clouded future, senators moved to attach it to two must-do spending bills that will move through Congress this year.