Government orders ministries to ensure security at airport

Congo's director general of police, Colonel Jean Francois Denguet, has chided his agents at the country's international airport in the capital, Brazzaville, for the chaos and lack of security at the facility at a time when the government has joined other nations in condemning international terrorism, PANA reported. "Maya Maya Airport is like an open field through which every person goes without being checked and others mill about," it quoted him as saying after a spot visit on Thursday. He accused airport security agents of "incompetence and the lack of good judgment". The airport, in the the central urban district of Moungali, is ringed by dilapidated fencing that enables residents in the neighbourhood to cross the runway on foot and by car without challenge. PANA reported an official of the National Civil Aviation Agency, Felix Mabiala, as saying security forces encouraged the runway invasions. "Border police agents, posted at the airport, are responsible for the disorder," PANA reported him as saying. The government ordered the ministries of the interior, defence, transport and civil aviation to beef up national security and those of US interests, in the wake of the 11 September attacks on New York's World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, in Washington DC.