-Caveat Lector-
>From http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020107/1/29jvl.html
> Osler wrote that it would be relatively unlikely that an Iraqi- owned
> boat would be delivering Iranian arms, given the history of enmity
> between the two states, unless it emerged that the boat was in fact
> owned by an Iraqi opposition group.
}}}>Begin
Monday January 7, 11:24 AM
New controversy over weapons ship seized by Israel
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon accused Yasser Arafat of being a
"major player" in world terrorism over the seizure of a ship laden
with tonnes of weapons, but Lloyd's List threw doubt on his claim
that the vessel was owned by Arafat's Palestinian Authority.
And despite the furore of the weapons smuggling ship, special US
peace envoy Anthony Zinni said he saw "real opportunities for
progress" after a joint security meeting aimed at strengthening a
fragile ceasefire.
Sharon said Sunday in the Red Sea port of Eilat: "The Palestinian
Authority is a major player in the networks of world terrorism. They
are headed by Iran and aimed at sowing death and destruction
throughout the entire world."
He was speaking at a news conference held in front of a vast haul of
50 tonnes of weapons seized last Thursday by Israeli commandos who
raided a ship allegedly owned by the Palestinian Authority and
captained by a Palestinian Authority naval police officer.
The cache included Katyusha rockets with a 20-kilometre (12- mile)
range capable of reaching Tel Aviv from the West Bank, anti-tank
rockets, mortar bombs, sniper rifles, mines and ammunition.
Calling the vessel a "ship of terror," Sharon said the capture was "another milestone
in an ongoing and just battle against the forces of terrorism, of the Palestinian
Authority and its leader," Arafat.
He said the "type and character of the weapons ... prove once again that the
Palestinian Authority has been focusing its efforts on terrorism, in preparing the
operational infrastructure for the next waves of terrorism."
But the specialist shipping paper Lloyd's List said in London that the vessel "is
probably Iraqi-owned."
The article, by Lloyd's List journalist David Osler, said that if confirmed, the Iraqi
ownership of the vessel could undermine the Israeli claims that it was owned and
crewed by the Palestinian Authority, and contained ar
ms from Iran.
The paper named the current owner of the ship, the Karine A, as Ali Mohammed Abbas, an
Iraqi national, and cited documents which it said showed that Abbas had bought the
vessel from its former owners, a Lebanese shipping
company, on August 31 last year.
Osler wrote that it would be relatively unlikely that an Iraqi- owned
boat would be delivering Iranian arms, given the history of enmity
between the two states, unless it emerged that the boat was in fact
owned by an Iraqi opposition group.
It was also possible that an Iraqi owner might have seen the delivery
of arms as a simple business proposition -- or that the vessel's
owner simply did not know what it was carrying, the Lloyd's List
journalist wrote.
A further possibility was that after being sold to Abbas, the Karine
A was quickly sold on to another owner, the paper said.
There was no immediate reaction to the Lloyd's List report from Iraq.
Both Iran and the Palestinian Authority have denied any knowledge of
the ship or its cargo.
"The Palestinian leadership denies any link with the boat and
expresses its great surprise that it is being associated with this
affair at a time when it is engaged in a battle to halt the
violence," it said in an official statement released in Gaza City.
The Palestinian leadership said Arafat had informed Zinni that it was
ready to take part in an international probe into the affair with the
United States, Europe, Russia, the United Nations and Arab parties.
Some Israeli analysts said the weapons, had they reached the
Palestinian territories, could have caused a serious shift in the
balance of power between the Palestinians and Israel, which receives
more than a billion dollars in US military aid every year and has
state-of-the-art military hardware.
The haul included armour-piercing Sagger missiles which could have
posed a threat to Israeli armoured vehicles which make regular
incursions into land nominally under Palestinian control to seize
suspected militants.
As Sharon praised his forces for the daring raid 500 kilometres (310
miles) south of Israel's shores, Zinni was hosting a high- level
security meeting to bolster the tentative ceasefire which has taken
hold in the past two weeks.
"After four days of intensive discussions with Israelis and
Palestinians, it is clear that, while serious challenges remain,
there are real opportunities for progress," Zinni said in a statement
after the meeting.
The statement said US-mediated talks would continue even though Zinni
himself was due to fly back to Washington at midnight (2200 GMT).
It added that the retired US general, whose first mission was
torpedoed by a massive wave of Palestinian suicide bombings and
Israeli counter-attacks at the beginning of December, would return to
the region "in the near future to assess what the parties have been
able to achieve" in the ongoing meetings.
Despite the ship row, the Palestinian police pressed ahead with their
crackdown on militant groups considered a threat to the fragile truce
with Israel, arresting six members of the hardline group Islamic
Jihad in the northern West Bank town of Jenin.
Two Jihad members were injured, one of them seriously, when the sweep
erupted into a gunfight, security officials said.
The Islamic Salvation Party, close to the radical group Hamas, also
said their secretary general Jamal Saleh had been "kidnapped" Sunday
by Palestinian military intelligence agents.
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