Destroyer USS John McCain Moving To Intercept N. Korean Ship

[kmrtnsn]

I think the Messiah (I didn't coin the term but do find the way many people refer to him and think of him quite amusing) and his posse are hoping that this will fade from the headlines so they can do nothing about it, a play taken straight from the GB43 North Korea playbook. Diplomacy at its finest.

[Safetyhit]

I think the Messiah (I didn't coin the term but do find the way many people refer to him and think of him quite amusing) and his posse are hoping that this will fade from the headlines so they can do nothing about it, a play taken straight from the GB43 North Korea playbook. Diplomacy at its finest.

Hard to imagine after all that yip-yap and the military intervention they would just let it fade into oblivion. At some point at least FOX will question the outcome.

At least I hope so.

[kmrtnsn]

Source: Suspected NKorean weapons ship changes course after days under eye of US Navy
By PAULINE JELINEK , Associated Press

Last update: June 30, 2009 - 8:11 PM
WASHINGTON - U.S. officials said Tuesday that a North Korean ship has turned around and is headed back toward the north where it came from, after being tracked for more than a week by American Navy vessels on suspicion of carrying illegal weapons.

The move keeps the U.S. and the rest of the international community guessing: Where is the Kang Nam going? Does its cargo include materials banned by a new U.N. anti-proliferation resolution?

The ship left a North Korean port of Nampo on June 17 and is the first vessel monitored under U.N. sanctions that ban the regime from selling arms and nuclear-related material.

The Navy has been watching it — at times following it from a distance. It traveled south and southwest for more than a week; then, on Sunday, it turned around and headed back north, two U.S. officials said on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence.

Nearly two weeks after the ship left North Korea, officials said Tuesday they still don't know where it is going. But it was some 250 miles south of Hong Kong on Tuesday, one official said.

Though acknowledging all along that the Kang Nam's destination was unclear, some officials said last week that it could be going to Myanmar and that it was unclear whether it could reach there without stopping in another port to refuel.

The U.N. resolution allows the international community to ask for permission to board and search any suspect ship on the seas. If permission for inspection is refused, authorities can ask for an inspection in whichever nation where the ship pulls into port.

North Korea has said it would consider any interception of its ships a declaration of war.

Two officials had said earlier in the day Tuesday that the Kang Nam had been moving very slowly in recent days, something that could signal it was trying to conserve fuel.

They said they didn't know what the turnaround of the ship means, nor what prompted it.

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, said Sunday that Washington was "following the progress of that ship very closely," but she would not say whether the U.S. would confront the Kang Nam.

The sailing of the vessel — and efforts to track it — set up the first test of a new U.N. Security Council resolution that authorizes member states to inspect North Korean vessels. The sanctions are punishment for an underground nuclear test the North carried out in May in defiance of past resolutions.

Meanwhile on Tuesday, the Obama administration imposed financial sanctions on a company in Iran that is accused of involvement in North Korea's missile proliferation network.

In the latest move to keep pressure on Pyongyang and its nuclear ambitions, the Treasury Department moved against Hong Kong Electronics, a company located in Kish Island, Iran. The action means that any bank accounts or other financial assets found in the United States belonging to the company must be frozen. Americans also are prohibited from doing business with the firm.


Second Thoughts on North Korea’s Inscrutable Ship
U.S. Pursues Firms With Ties to North Korea (July 1, 2009)


For more than two weeks now, White House officials have been receiving frequent updates on a rusting North Korean ship, the Kang Nam 1, as it makes its way dead-slow across the South China Sea. Earlier this month, Mr. Obama’s aides thought the aging hulk — with its long rap sheet for surreptitious deliveries of missiles and arms — would be the first test of a United Nations Security Council resolution giving countries the right to hail suspect shipments, and order them to a nearby port for inspection.

But now some top officials in the Obama administration are beginning to wonder whether Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader, ordered the Kang Nam 1 out on a fishing expedition — in hopes that a new American president will be his first catch.

“The whole thing just doesn’t add up,” said one senior administration official who has been tracking the cargo ship’s lazy summer journey. “My worry is that we make a big demand about seeing the cargo, and then there’s a tense standoff, and when it’s all over we discover that old man Kim set us up to look like George Bush searching for nonexistent W.M.D.”

Are the North Koreans really that wily?

Maybe so. For a country that prides itself on its hermetic seal, it has played a pretty impressive game for the past eight years. As the United States headed for Iraq, it amassed the fuel for six or eight nuclear weapons. Mr. Kim set off a nuclear blast in 2006, then got the United States to take the North off the terrorism list in return for hobbling its main nuclear facility. Now it has set off another test and appears to be reactivating that facility, prompting Mr. Obama’s defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, to vow he would not “buy the same horse” a second time.

With the world on high alert to intercept North Korean shipments — maybe a load of missiles like it sent to Yemen a few years back, or reactor parts like those that helped Syria start a secret program — imagine the headlines if the United States and its allies chased after a ship full of innocuous cargo. Inside the administration, officials ranging from Vice President Joe Biden to the deputy secretary of state, James Steinberg, have cautioned the administration to go slow. The Navy seems to need no convincing. It has kept the the U.S.S. John McCain — named for the senator’s father and grandfather — well beyond the horizon, so there is no sense of a low-speed chase at sea.

Pentagon officials are clearly not eager to confront the Kang Nam 1. The intelligence about what is on board is typically murky. Some say they suspect small arms, which are banned by the United Nations resolution but hardly a major threat. Members of Mr. Obama’s team who served in the Clinton administration remember past embarrassments, including the interception of a Chinese ship suspected of carrying chemical precursors in the early 1990s. When the ship was finally cornered, the cargo turned out to be benign.

Mr. Obama’s top aides say they are acutely aware of the dangers if the same happened with the Kang Nam 1. Whatever momentum the administration has created to confront the North Koreans would be lost if the first intercepted ship was carrying sea bass, or Ping-Pong balls.

The Kang Nam 1 is hardly the only slow-burning confrontation with North Korea these days, or even the most important. The country’s nuclear tests, while less than impressive, indicate that Mr. Kim’s engineers are getting better at nuclear detonations. They are learning from the many mistakes made during their missile tests, and they may have scheduled another one for coming days.

(In 2006 the North set off missiles on July 4, and the nuclear test came on Memorial Day, showing a particular affection for American national holidays. Many expect the next missile test — one the North has suggested might be aimed at Hawaii — could come on Saturday. But if your holiday plans call for spending the day on Diamond Head, it is probably not worth cancelling your plans: There is no evidence yet the North’s missiles can reach that far, and their aim is singularly unimpressive.)

But the Kang Nam 1 is a test of whether United Nations sanctions have some teeth. And in a bigger sense the caution about intercepting the ship reflects a bigger concern about going about sanctions in the right way — a way that keeps the allies and other nations on board. Mr. Obama is eager to demonstrate, his aides say, that he is not Mr. Bush and will not stretch the authorities granted by the Security Council. So American officials say they have no intention of boarding the Kang Nam 1 or any other North Korean-flagged ship on the high seas, a step the North has warned it would consider an act of war. They have been telling members of Congress that this is not the Cuban Missile Crisis — it is an effort to bring the Chinese and the Russians aboard for gradually escalating sanctions.

The country watching all this most closely, officials say they assume, is Iran. When the headlines about the election and potential vote fraud in Iran begin to fade, its nuclear facilities could be the next targets of a United Nations-sanctioned inspection regime.

The Iranians have, in the past, ranked among North Korea’s biggest customers for missile parts, some shipped directly from North Korea. Now that there is renewed talk of sanctions aimed at Tehran — a likely subject of conversation at the meeting of leaders of the largest industrial nations in Italy next week — the outcome of the world’s most lethargic race at sea may appear as important in the Strait of Hormuz as it does in the South China Sea.