Burma's state-owned media announced that it had “no information” on the North Korean- flagged cargo ship Kang Nam 1 being tracked by a US warship while reportedly enroute to a port near Rangoon.
The state-owned newspaper The New Light of Myanmar said on Thursday that foreign news agencies have been "spreading rumors" about the North Korean cargo vessel that left Nampo port last week.
"The authorities concerned have no information about the Kang Nam 1 itself as reported by foreign news agencies," the report said.
The report said that another cargo North Korean vessel, the MV Dumangang, is due to arrive in Rangoon from Kolkata in India on June 27 with a shipment of about 8,000 tons of rice.
South Korea’s YTN television news channel, citing an unnamed intelligence source, reported on Sunday that the Kang Nam 1 was suspected of carrying missiles or related parts and was heading for Burma via Singapore.
Earlier, a port official in Rangoon told The Irrawaddy that the North Korean ship would dock at Thilawa port, some 20 miles (30 kilometers) south of Rangoon, in the next few days.
A UN Security Council resolution passed earlier this month, in response to the North Korea’s May 25 nuclear test, prohibits Pyongyang from exporting or importing any weapons. It calls on UN states to intercept any ships believed to hold illicit material.
A US guided-missile destroyer, the USS John S. McCain, might intercept the Kang Nam 1. However, the United States could also wait to see if the ship attempts to refuel in Singapore.
Singapore’s maritime and port authority said on Thursday that it had not received any information that the ship had requested to dock in the city-state, Agency France Presse reported.
While the South Korean intelligence agency believes the ship is carrying small arms for the Burmese military government, some analysts said concerns about unconventional weapon proliferation to Burma are not totally unfounded.
"Given North Korea's nuclear trade to Syria, its attempts to sell Scuds to Myanmar [Burma], and its ongoing sales of conventional arms, there's reason to be worried about a WMD [weapons of mass destruction] relationship," Michael Green, an Asia expert and former adviser to then-President George W. Bush told the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.
Analysts at Yale University several weeks ago released photographs of workers constructing a network of tunnels beneath Burma's capital Naypyidaw with North Korean coworkers.
irrawaddy
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