Spanish warships intercepted a North Korean ship carrying 15 hidden Scud missiles and about 85 drums of chemicals in the Arabian Sea, Spain said yesterday.
Spanish Defense Minister Federico Trillo told a news conference that the ship, intercepted on Monday, was now under the control of the US as head of an international coalition to fight terrorism.
Yemen yesterday demanded that the missiles, which it said it ordered from North Korea, be returned immediately.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The ship, the So San and initially bound for "an unknown Middle East port," would be taken to a US military base on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, Trillo said.
The chemicals it was carrying had yet to be identified.
The US, leading a bid to rid Iraq of alleged banned weapons and threatening war to meet that aim, said yesterday the discovery was unlikely to affect its policy on North Korea.
The country is locked in a dispute with Washington and Japan and South Korea over its right to develop a nuclear weapons program.
Trillo said the So San was found to be carrying 15 complete Scud missiles and 15 conventional warheads. US and Spanish officials said the missiles were found under thousands of bags of cement.
The ship was intercepted after the captain of the Spanish frigate Navarra ordered it to stop its engines. The Spanish ship fired warning shots when the So San refused to stop and tried to speed away.
Spanish special forces boarded and took control of the ship without injuries, Trillo said. The Spanish advised a US ship in the area and they were joined by US inspectors.
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said North Korea was the world's "single largest proliferator" of missile technology. He said he did not know the final destination of the Scuds.
"They continue to be the single largest proliferator of ballistic missile technology on the face of the earth, and they are putting into the hands of many countries the technologies and capabilities which have the potential for killing hundreds of thousands of people," Rumsfeld told reporters in the African state of Djibouti while on a regional tour.
US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, arriving in China on an Asian tour to drum up support for Washington's push to disarm Iraq, earlier said the interception of the So San was not a surprise to the US.
But yesterday, Yemen claimed the missiles were for its armed forces and that there was nothing untoward about he shipment.
Foreign Minister Abu Baker Abdullah al-Kurbi called Washington's ambassador Edmund Hull to his office and handed over a letter strongly protesting the interception of the missiles, the official SABA news agency reported.
"This cargo is part of previous orders made a long time ago and belongs to the Yemeni government and armed forces," the letter said.
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