Panama says weapons on North Korean ship were from Cuba.

By Lomi Kriel
Reuters Panama detained a North Korean-flagged ship for investigation on suspicion of concealing missile equipment in a shipment of brown sugar from Cuba, a move that led to a standoff during which the ship's captain threatened to cut his own throat.

The ship was stopped last week while heading towards the Panama Canal, and authorities arrested the crew on Monday after finding undeclared missile-shaped objects, a potential violation of United Nations (UN) sanctions on North Korea's nuclear program.

"We discovered containers that allegedly contain sophisticated missile equipment. This is not allowed. The Panama Canal is a canal of peace, not war," Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli told a local radio station on Tuesday.

A photo posted on Martinelli's official Twitter page from inside the ship shows a long, green, missile-shaped object with a tapered end. A security expert said the images showed radar systems from the Vietnam War era for the Soviet family of surface-to-air missiles.

The U.S. State Department praised Panama's decision to intercept the ship, which it said had a history of involvement in drug trafficking, and warned that the vessel could violate UN Security Council resolutions against arms shipments.

The UN has imposed a series of sanctions on North Korea, including strict rules on arms shipments, measures aimed at curbing its nuclear weapons program.

Panama's Security Minister, José Raúl Mulino, said his government detained the ship last Wednesday and that so far it has found two containers of military equipment. He did not specify whether the cargo contained actual missiles, but said the search could last weeks.

When Panamanian officials began inspecting the containers with more than 250 100-kilogram sacks of brown sugar, the captain became violent, Mulino said.

The captain, a North Korean citizen like the crew, tried to cut his throat with a knife, a police official said. The man was in hospital in stable condition, the official added, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Ben Rhode, a North Korea expert at Harvard University's Kennedy School, suggested that the captain's suicide attempt may have been an effort to escape severe punishment from North Korean authorities for failing to complete his mission.

All 35 crew members of the ship, named Chong Chon Gang, were arrested after resisting orders from Panama and are now being questioned at Fort Sherman, a former U.S. Army base in the Atlantic, the official added.

Javier Caraballo, the leading prosecutor in the narcotics trafficking area in Panama, told local TV that the ship was headed for North Korea.

An official from the North Korean mission to the UN said that no one was available to comment on the ship.

ILLEGAL CARGO

IHS Jane's, a global analytics firm, stated that it had identified the equipment shown in the photos as an RSN-75 'Fan Song' fire control radar for the SA-2 family of surface-to-air missiles.

The radar, built by Russian arms manufacturer Almaz-Antey and first used during the Vietnam War, may have destroyed many Western aircraft, according to the Air Force Australia defense institute.

Cuba stated that the North Korean cargo ship was loaded at one of its ports with 10 tons of sugar and 240 tons of "obsolete defensive weaponry," according to a statement released Tuesday by the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Cuban government said the weapons were being sent back to North Korea for maintenance, and the cargo included two anti-aircraft batteries, nine disassembled missiles, and two MiG-21 aircraft, all Soviet-era military weapons built in the mid-20th century.

North Korea, a poor Asian country isolated from the international community, is under harsh sanctions from the UN, the United States, and the European Union, including a UN ban on any arms exports, due to its controversial nuclear program.
Previous sanctions violations included North Korean shipments of weapons-related material to Syria in November 2010 and to Iran in 2008, according to a May UN report.

MONITORED SHIP

The ship, built in 1977, left Port Vostochny in Russia's far east on April 12, according to maritime intelligence firm Lloyd List Intelligence.

It was then registered upon arriving in Balboa, on the Pacific side of the Panama Canal, on May 31, and crossed the waterway the following day bound for Havana, the capital of Cuba.

It then disappeared from the tracking system and reappeared in Manzanillo, Panama, on July 11, according to navigation data obtained by the IHS Maritime research group. IHS stated that there were indications that the vessel had changed cargo during that time.

In 2010, the Chong Chon Gang was stopped by Ukrainian authorities who found small arms ammunition and narcotics on board the ship, according to arms trafficking expert Hugh Griffiths at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

A year earlier, the ship stopped in Tartus, Syria, which is home to a Russian naval base, Griffiths added.

Additional reporting David Alire Garcia, Gabriel Stargardter, Luc Cohen, Paul Eckert, Lucas Iberico-Lozada and Louis Charbonneau; and Marc Frank, in Havana)