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South Asia trip takes on dual significance

BY J. JIONI PALMER | WASHINGTON BUREAU

January 10, 2005

WASHINGTON - Two local congressmen will travel to South Asia this week to survey tsunami relief efforts and review anti-terror measures at the world's largest seaport.

The five-member delegation, led by Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-Elmhurst), and including Rep. Steve Israel (D-Huntington), leaves today for Singapore, where the United Nations has established a coordinating center, and will travel later in the week to Sri Lanka, where more than 30,000 people perished.

The trip, planned weeks ago, initially was designed as a Homeland Security fact-finding mission to assess efforts to prevent shipping containers from being breached by terrorists, Crowley said yesterday.

"Singapore's port ships a lot to the United States; we wanted to see what mechanisms they have to make sure cargo containers are free of weapons of mass destruction," said Crowley, who sits on the International Relations Committee.

After the tsunamis, Crowley said, delegation members reworked their plans to include some of the hardest-hit areas.

The first part of the trip is being sponsored by the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies, a regional research center based in Singapore. The latter half is paid for by the Communications Consortium Media Center, which promotes the work of the United Nations Population Fund.

The delegation will include Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), who is a Queens native.

Israel said he is concerned about reports that emergency supplies aren't making it to hard-hit areas quickly enough.

"I'd like to see for myself if we need to deploy additional resources," said Israel, who sits on the House Armed Services Committee.

He said the American military is "stretched to the limit," but this might be an opportunity to bolster it.

"This might be a very strong argument for the expanding the military, not for hard power, but for soft power," Israel said. "Not for blowing things up but to put things together."