Panama asks UN to advise on North Korean arms ship

Panama’s security minister Jose Raul Mulino said the crew of the ship would be charged with crimes against the country’s internal security.

Cuba says the weapons, found buried in sacks of sugar on a North Korean ship which was seized as it tried to cross the Panama Canal, are “obsolete” and were being sent to be repaired.

The Panamanian authorities said it might take a week to search the entire vessel, and have requested help from United Nations inspectors, along with Colombia and Britain, said Javier Carballo, Panama’s top narcotics prosecutor.

North Korea is barred by UN sanctions from importing sophisticated weapons or missiles, and Jose Raul Mulino said his government had not spoken to Pyongyang, telling reporters: “We have no relationship with them”.

Cuba’s Foreign Ministry released a statement late on Tuesday acknowledging that it owned the military equipment, and saying that it had been shipped out to be repaired and returned to the island.

The ship identified as the 14,000-ton Chong Chon Gang, which had departed Cuba en route to North Korea, was seized on Tuesday by Panamanian officials, who thought it might be carrying drugs.

The Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli said that it was carrying missiles and other arms “hidden in containers underneath the cargo of sugar.”

He tweeted a photo showing a green tube that appears to be a horizontal antenna for the SNR-75 “Fan Song” radar.

This is used to guide missiles fired by the SA-2 air-defense system found in former Warsaw Pact and Soviet-allied nations, said Neil Ashdown, an analyst for IHS Jane’s Intelligence.

“It is possible that this could be being sent to North Korea to update its high-altitude air-defense capabilities,” he told Reuters.

Jane’s also said the equipment could be headed to North Korea to be upgraded.

Portraits of former leader Kim Jong-il (R) and former president Kim Il-sung are hung in one of the rooms inside the North Korean flagged ship.

Crew arrested

North Korea has not commented on the seizure, during which the captain had a heart attack and also tried to commit suicide, according to officials.

President Martinelli also said that 35 North Koreans were arrested after resisting police efforts to intercept the ship.

“The agreements subscribed by Cuba in this field are supported by the need to maintain our defensive capacity in order to preserve national sovereignty,” the statement read.

It said the vessel was bound for North Korea mostly loaded with sugar – 10,000 tons of it – but added that the cargo also included 240 metric tons of “obsolete defensive weapons”: two Volga and Pechora anti-aircraft missile systems, nine missiles “in parts and spares,” two Mig-21 Bis and 15 engines for those airplanes.

It concluded by saying that Havana remains “unwavering” in its commitment to international law, peace and nuclear disarmament.