Wary India frisks North Korean freighter
By Sreeram Chaulia
After the international suspense thriller in June over the movements of the
North Korean cargo ship Kang Nam I ended with the freighter beating a
retreat and returning home, an equally intriguing case has emerged off the
southern coast of India.
Another North Korean vessel, the Mu San, is currently in the custody of
Indian authorities after it dropped anchor without permission at Hut Bay, the
entry point to India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands on August 6.
If the case of Kang Nam I was curious, the Mu San has its own
mysteries that are deepening by the day. When the ship first approached Andaman
and Nicobar, India's coast guards sent an
aircraft overhead to communicate, but the North Koreans refused to respond.
A Coast Guard ship then tailed it and found that the 39 North Korean sailors on
board were unwilling to halt. On being approached, the Mu San attempted
to escape and Indian authorities fired in the air. After a tense six-hour
chase, the ship finally "obeyed" and was dragged to the nearby city of Port
Blair for inspection.
According to the captured sailors, the ship was carrying 16,500 tons of sugar
bound for Iraq - a fact confirmed by searching its contents. One theory being
bandied about is that the craft decided to dock in India for purely commercial
reasons after learning that New Delhi had just announced zero import duties on
sugar, a commodity that has fallen short this year due to a failed crop.
Sugar as merchandise on the high seas is a seemingly innocuous mission, except
that the ship's crew frequently changed their versions when interrogated.
The claim that they came to make a quick killing on eased tariffs did not
dovetail with the other assertion of the ship's captain that they changed
direction towards the Andaman Islands because of "mechanical failure".
Moreover, the other stops the vessel made along the way were erratic and
suspicious.
Indian officials have learned that the Mu San docked unscheduled in
Singapore without following the routine passport stamping procedure.
Investigators also say that the same ship had in the past "made several voyages
between North Korea and China without maintaining proper records".
As North Korea's nuclear program - which is now a matter of global concern and
subject to United Nations sanctions - has been a beneficiary of Chinese
technology and materiel transfer, India's military and civilian intelligence
agencies rushed to the site where the Mu San is being held.
As with the Kang Nam I, the proliferation potential of the Mu San
had to be thoroughly checked by India owing to obligations under UN Security
Council Resolution 1874, which encourages member states to search North Korean
cargo on land, sea and air for fissile substances or related technologies.
When the detention of the Mu San was publicized, US ambassador Philip
Goldberg, the coordinator for implementing Resolution 1874, said in Washington
that the Indians "might have acted under international law or their own
domestic laws".
The ambiguity stems from New Delhi's own reticence about being openly seen as
participating in a US-driven agenda to beef up the sanctions regime against
Pyongyang after it conducted its second nuclear test in May.
When North Korea triggered its latest nuclear explosion this year, India
condemned it as "unfortunate" and "a development of serious concern". Yet, New
Delhi has had reservations about participating in previous American-led
ventures to actively intercept and inspect ships of "rogue states" that could
be ferrying nuclear parts or designs.
When the George W Bush administration launched the multi-national Proliferation
Security Initiative (PSI) in 2003 to interdict third-country ships for
suspected nuclear material, India opted out, even though some 90 states signed
on. New Delhi was worried that joining the PSI would raise questions about the
international legality of the proposed strong-arm actions and also that it
might oblige India to open its own nuclear facilities to comprehensive
safeguards inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Although the PSI was primarily aimed at pre-empting the North Korean model of
nuclear and missile component smuggling using civilian ships as covers, India
was concerned that the phrase "states of proliferation concern" could one day
be turned against it.
Given the continued tug-of-war between American non-proliferation lobbies and
India over the privileges and conditions of the civilian nuclear deal inked
last year, New Delhi has again not shown any overt enthusiasm for muscular
non-proliferation approaches outlined in Resolution 1874.
All that the Indian side will admit presently is that the Mu San will be
booked under the Indian Maritime Act for illegal trespassing. While it is
difficult to decode whether India has finally overcome its reservations to
PSI-like coalitions and entered a similar arrangement with the US through the
backdoor via the Mu San, the China factor features uppermost in New
Delhi's approach to North Korea's sanctions-busting oceanic nuclear commerce.
Indian strategists have been ringing alarm bells at China's maritime
reconnaissance and intelligence station on the Coco Islands, which were leased
by Myanmar in the early 1990s. These Islands are an ideal location for China to
monitor Indian naval and missile launch facilities in the Andaman and Nicobar
Islands as well as the Indian Navy's maneuvers throughout the eastern Indian
Ocean.
The fact that the Mu San, with a history of traveling back and forth to
China, approached the strategically sensitive Andaman Islands is an angle that
India's external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW),
will necessarily probe.
Apart from China, India also has memories of North Korean ships transferring
missile and nuclear parts to Pakistan and Iran. The clandestine network of
disgraced Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who ran an extended
"nuclear Wal-Mart", treated North Korea as a lynchpin. In 1999, India actually
seized a cache of North Korean missile fragments headed for Pakistan when the
ship docked at a port on India's western coast.
After thorough frisking, the Mu San has been cleared of any weapons of
mass destruction, but India's naval sentinels are still puzzled why one of its
detained crew members was a North Korean government agent. Why should a
merchant navy ship have on board a state official? The answers are hard to come
by, as only one of the North Korean sailors is said to be conversant in
English.
Unlike the American stalking of Kang Nam I, which drew outrage from
Pyongyang as one step prior to a declaration of "war", the reaction of the
North Korean government to the grounding of the Mu San has been dead
silence. The incident does not contain enough incendiary circumstances to blow
out into a major diplomatic row or a confrontation between the governments of
North Korea and India, which anyway have minimal relations.
But by taking the bull by the horns and not releasing the ship nearly two weeks
after it was seized, New Delhi has opened new possibilities for cooperation
with Washington and also sent unmistakable signals to hostile proliferation
racketeers and intelligence agencies not to snoop around its waters.
Sreeram Chaulia is associate professor of world politics at the Jindal
Global Law School in Sonipat, India.
(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about
sales, syndication and
republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
