The US Government is looking for an extension to the existing passenger information sharing agreement it currently has with the UK and EU airlines and without this travelling to the US could be become very

difficult for EU citizens and others beyond this July.

With the security measures that are in place today, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has told CBS News that a 9/11 scenario would be much more difficult for terrorists to pull off today.

He told the news channel yesterday that if the US had the kind of information then that it has today, then the 9/11 attacks would have been averted.

But Chertoff's unusually candid comments are part of a solid agenda, since the controversial information sharing agreement with the European Union expires this July and the US is keen to renew it. This agreement requires airlines from the EU to send passenger details to the US authorities in advance of their arrival at US immigration.

The US argues that an extension is only reasonable since arrivals from the EU benefit from the visa waiver and terrorists have used this route to enter the US in the past, so the authorities need to continually track who is coming in and when. Al Qaeda's Richard Reid [the would-be shoe bomber-Ed] is just one example of a terrorist who used a British passport to gain access to board a US-bound aircraft.

But critics of the agreement argue that it infringes upon passenger's rights and it should therefore be scrapped.

But whether the agreement is extended or not, it is clear that the US intends to keep the passenger information sharing requirement in place and if an extension is opposed by the EU, then travelling to the US could be become very difficult for EU airlines, citizens and others.