New Passport Rules Are Put Off by U.S.

[Khephra]

The Bush administration has decided to postpone enforcement of new antiterrorism regulations that had threatened to block millions of Western Europeans and citizens of other developed nations from traveling to the United States unless they obtained new, computer-coded passports, senior administration officials said today.

They said the new passport rules, which were supposed to take effect on Oct. 1 and which were mandated by Congress as an antiterrorism measure, will not be enforced until October 2004.

The rules will require that citizens of 27 countries who do not usually require visas to visit the United States — most of them in Western Europe, as well as Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Brunei — carry passports with text that can be read by computerized scanners at airports and other American border stations.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/09/politics/09PASS.html