'Arms ship' changes course

2009-07-01 09:11

Seoul - A North Korean ship tracked by the US navy on suspicion of carrying a banned arms cargo may be returning home, a US official said, as Washington cracks down on companies helping Pyongyang export missile systems.

North Korea will find it increasingly difficult to trade arms due to US moves and UN sanctions to punish it for a May nuclear test, but those measure will not end the weapons exports the destitute state relies on for foreign currency, experts said.

"Of course, it raises the costs of doing the arms and weapons of mass destruction business, but it won't stop them from trying to circumvent the sanctions," said Daniel Pinkston with the International Crisis Group in Seoul.

The North Korean cargo ship Kang Nam was the first to be monitored by the US navy under a new system to track the North's arms shipments that were a part of the UN sanctions.

A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Tuesday the Kang Nam was heading back in the direction of North Korea after turning around within the last few days.

"We've no idea where it's going," the official said. "The US didn't do anything to make it turn around."

The ship was suspected of carrying missile parts and had been headed toward Myanmar, South Korean broadcaster YTN had quoted an intelligence source as saying. North Korea and Myanmar have drawn closer in recent years, perhaps deepening their affinity as the world moves to increasingly isolate them, analysts said.

On Monday Japanese police arrested three people, including one North Korean resident of Japan, on suspicion of trying to export to Myanmar a magnetic measuring device that could be used in missile construction, the Yomiuri newspaper said.

Tightening the screws further, the US Treasury and State Departments said they had targeted North Korea's Namchongang Trading Corp and Iran's Hong Kong Electronics under an executive order that would freeze their US assets and bar US firms from dealing with them.

"North Korea uses front companies like Hong Kong Electronics and a range of other deceptive practices to obscure the true nature of its financial dealings, making it nearly impossible for responsible banks and governments to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate North Korean transactions," Stuart Levey, undersecretary of the treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence.

Calling on China

The moves came as Philip Goldberg, US envoy for co-ordinating arms and other sanctions against North Korea under a recent UN resolution, was set to leave for Beijing, seeking to enlist China's help in targeting the North's weapons programme.

China, the North's biggest benefactor, backed a UN resolution condemning the North's nuclear test and imposing fresh sanctions on its arms trade, but Beijing has long been reluctant to press for more.

China, fearing a collapse in the North's government and the chaos that would cause on its border, supplies the North with oil, food and other items that prop up its wobbly economy.

"As long as China, to a large extent, and Russia, to a lesser extent, do not implement the sanctions, they will not work," said Cho Myungchul, a research fellow at the South's Korea Institute for International Economic Policy, who was an academic in North Korea before defecting to the South.

A UN aid agency said North Korea faces a long-term food crisis that is stunting the growth of an entire generation, with donations drying up and the government imposing new limits on aid programmes.

"But more importantly it should be noted that we have a situation where a very large part of the population has been undernourished for 15 or 20 years. We are seeing the combined impact of chronic undernourishment of a very large part of the population," Torben Due, the World Food Programme's North Korea country representative.

But the North may be pushing ahead with missile tests, a South Korean presidential aide said last week, partly aimed at securing internal support for leader Kim Jong-il as he prepares for succession in Asia's only communist dynasty.

Japan's Coast Guard said North Korea has warned it would conduct military firing exercises in 10 areas mostly near its coast, between June 29 and July 21.

- Reuters