Officials Seek Destination of North Korean Arms(K-100 AWACS killer on board?)
12/14/09 | THOMAS FULLER and DAVID E. SANGER
Posted on Mon Dec 14 2009 21:03:24 GMT+0530 (India Standard Time) by TigerLikesRooster
Officials Seek Destination of North Korean Arms
By THOMAS FULLER and DAVID E. SANGER
BANGKOK, Thailand — A shipment of arms and apparently sophisticated missiles from North Korea seized here on a tip from American intelligence agencies has set off a series of investigations, as officials try to determine whether the cargo was headed to South Asia or the Middle East.
The Obama administration welcomed the interception by the Thai authorities as evidence that it had scored a success in its effort to enforce a United Nations Security Council resolution banning weapons exports by the North Korean government, an attempt to cut off the country’s most profitable export.
A senior White House official in Washington, declining to speak on the record because the interception on Friday had required high-level coordination among intelligence agencies that watched the shipment as it was loaded in Pyongyang, said the seizure was evidence that the administration would “aggressively and rigorously implement” the Security Council resolution, passed in June after North Korea set off its second nuclear test.
The resolution, No. 1874, authorizes any country to inspect and seize North Korean weapons shipments that pass through its territory, regardless of the cargo’s ultimate destination.
/snip
Charles P. Vick, a missile expert at GlobalSecurity.org, a research group in Alexandria, Va., said that
if the markings were correct, the rockets might be K-100s, a type of Russian missile designed to destroy sophisticated radar planes. They are advertised as “Awacs killers,” a reference to the Airborne Warning and Control System planes used by the United States, Israel and soon India, which can orchestrate combat plans.
Mr. Vick noted that the diameter and length of the packaged missiles in the photograph appeared to match the specifications of the K-100: 16 inches wide and 20 feet long.
“It’s just a guess,”
But he said it was also possible that the tubular weapons might be smaller artillery rockets packed end to end to fit in the large metallic crates. Those types of rockets are “the kind of thing” that Hamas and Hezbollah use against Israel, he said.
Panitan Wattanayagorn, the Thai government spokesman, said in an interview that the aircraft, a Russian-made Ilyushin 76 registered in Georgia, passed through Bangkok twice — on its way to North Korea and on its return.
Four of the crew members are from Kazakhstan: Mr. Abdullayev, Ilyas Issakov, Aleksandr Zrybney and Vtaliy Shurmnov. The fifth, Mikhail Prtkhou, is from Belarus.
The aircraft was searched on the return journey after the Thai authorities were tipped off by American officials that it might be carrying weapons. The crew members were detained and the cargo was confiscated, but not immediately. The crew members had enough time to buy six large bottles of beer at a duty-free shop, but those were confiscated in the detention center where they have been kept since.
“There’s much more to this story than what has been made public so far,” said Bertil Lintner, an author who has written extensively on North Korea. “Why would you refuel in Thailand?”
Mr. Lintner said that if the aircraft had landed in neighboring Myanmar, which is ruled by generals friendly to the North Korean government, “there would have been no problem.”
No major seizures of weapons have been made public since the passage of Resolution 1874. This summer for about three weeks, the United States Navy tracked a North Korean freighter suspected of carrying banned cargo, and the ship eventually turned back to its home port without incident. The resolution does not permit the boarding of ships on the high seas.
Thomas Fuller reported from Bangkok, and David E. Sanger from Washington. Nice Pojanamesbaanstit contributed reporting from Bangkok, and William J. Broad from New York.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/world/asia/14thai.html?_r=1