Washington is preparing to execute a pilot plan in 2003 for exporting as many as four idle toxic vessels that are currently within the jurisdiction of the U.S. Federal Maritime Administration (MARAD), reports environmental watchdog Greenpeace International.

Greenpeace political adviser Kevin Stairs said these vessels contain significant quantities of asbestos, a known carcinogen, and PCBs (polychloride biphenyls), which are also a threat to human health.

The decision by the U.S. government of George W. Bush alters the policies enacted by the previous administration of Bill Clinton (1993-2001) that banned the export of these ships because of potential harm to the nations involved in scrapping older vessels.

Jim Puckett, of the Basel Action Network (BAN), a non- governmental organisation (NGO) based in the northwest U.S. city of Seattle and specialising in toxic trade issues, said the Clinton decision was taken as a consequence of activists' efforts and media reports.

Journalists revealed the horrendous conditions of Asian shipyards employing thousands of workers in breaking down ships to recover the steel, said Puckett.

But the U.S. Congress and Bush reversed the moratorium and set up a 20-million-dollar fund to finance a pilot project to export up to four ships and to sink others to create artificial reefs.

Ravi Agarwal, of the BAN office in India, says talks were reportedly held between U.S. authorities and Indian ship scrapping operators for the sale of vessels that have not been decontaminated.

"The United States professes to uphold the principle of environmental justice that calls for no peoples to be disproportionately victimised by toxic burdens," Agarwal told a press conference Wednesday in Geneva.

However, this principle apparently only holds inside U.S. borders, commented the activist.

"Developing countries will get these toxic ships and their inevitable pollution and worker health damage simply because we are poor," Agarwal said.

BAN, Greenpeace, Toxic Link of India and a group of trade unions charge that the U.S. policy violates the country's own legislation (Toxics Substances Control Act) as well as the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal.

The Basil Convention, whose 152 states party are meeting this week in Geneva, has since 1992 banned trade in hazardous waste among the countries that have ratified the Convention, a treaty overseen by the United Nations Environment Programme.

The strict application of the Convention should prevent the United States from exporting its toxic tankers even though that country is not a party to the treaty, says Puckett.

The BAN activist estimates there are some 300 ships of the U.S. national defence fleet rusting in that country's ports. Around 100 are docked on the coast of the eastern state of Virginia, on the Atlantic.

It is a ghost fleet full of asbestos and PCBs, commented Puckett.

In its original version signed in March 1989, the Basel Convention lacked the power to prevent toxic waste traffic, which generally flows from the countries of the industrialised North to the developing South.

But the nations of the South, and the African countries in particular, pushed through an amendment known as the Basel Ban, which, as of Jan 1, 1998, prohibits all hazardous waste exports from the wealthy and industrialised countries of the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to all non-OECD countries.

In addition to asbestos and PCBs, the list of hazardous waste includes arsenic, which is highly toxic and carcinogenic, cadmium, harmful to the lungs and other organs, and mercury, which damages the brain, kidneys and foetal development.

Also included is medical waste, such as syringes, pharmaceutical packaging and materials that might be infected and spread pathogenic germs and harmful microorganisms.

Many of the dangerous materials covered by the Convention are byproducts from the manufacture of the latest telecommunications and information technologies, like computers and mobile telephones.

BAN questions the idea that certain products, such as electronics -- which are produced mostly in Asia -- should be returned to that continent as waste.

The simple fact that transnational electronics companies exploit cheap labour to manufacture their products does not justify subjecting that same population to the waste from those products, says Puckett.

The NGOs maintain that the amendment, the Basel Ban, is still under threat from powerful governments and business lobbies, which are attempting to "sabotage" it.

BAN is calling on the 152 states party to the Convention gathered this week in Geneva to emphatically reject any "pilot plan", such as the one announced by the United States, for exporting toxic ships to the developing South.