WASHINGTON - After a dramatic allied seizure on the high seas of a North Korean cargo vessel hiding a shipment of Scud missiles under a load of cement, the United States allowed the shipment of some 15 missiles to continue on to Yemen yesterday.
Calling North Korea "one of the great proliferators on the face of the Earth," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said the missile shipment "was going to a country we have good relations with."
Powell said that after a "flurry of phone calls," both he and Vice President Dick Cheney were assured by Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Salih that the missiles were for Yemen's self-defense and would not be turned over to any other country.
In addition, Powell said he and Cheney were told that Yemen planned no further weapons deliveries from North Korea.
Initially there was concern the North Korean cargo ship was heading for Iraq, said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.
U.S. intelligence satellites and spy planes had been tracking the ship since it left North Korea in mid-November. Because the ship was not flying a national flag and did not respond to orders to stop, it could be boarded under international law, officials said.
Pentagon officials said the United States was told by Yemen in August that it would no longer import Scuds. Such assurances came after a North Korean company was sanctioned that month for transferring Scud technology to Yemen during the Clinton administration, officials said.
Fleischer repeatedly stressed that Yemen is a "partner" of the United States in the war on terror, even though it was the site of the October 2000 terrorist attack on an American destroyer, the USS Cole, which left 17 sailors dead and 39 injured. And in October, a French tanker off Yemen was rammed by an explosives-laden boat that U.S. officials say was the work of al-Qaida operatives.
After last year's twin terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Yemen invited U.S. special operations troops into the country to train its anti-terrorist forces and last month allowed the CIA to kill a carload of al-Qaida operatives with a missile fired from a Predator drone.
'Exposes flaws'
The White House said the Scud incident calls for stricter international agreements governing the sale of missile technology, much like the more stringent agreements controlling the transfer of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
"This has shown that proliferation, when it comes to missiles, can be re-evaluated and relooked at by the international community," Fleischer said. "This incident exposes flaws in international laws and international regimes."
Yesterday's developments brought a tepid and colorless ending, couched in diplomatic language, to what began as a raw-boned sea story that unfolded in the Arabian Sea, several hundred miles off Yemen.
Early Monday morning a Spanish frigate in international waters fired across the bow of the North Korean-owned cargo ship after officials said it ignored warnings to stop.
Spanish marines then slid down a rope dangling from a helicopter onto the deck of the cargo ship and held its estimated 20-member crew at gunpoint. In the ship's hold, about 20 containers of Scud missile parts were found partially hidden amid 40,000 bags of cement - the only items listed on the ship's manifest, officials said.
The Spanish requested American help and U.S. Navy SEAL commandos and explosive ordnance specialists arrived by helicopter from the nearby USS Nassau, an amphibious assault ship from Norfolk, Va. Eventually parts for about 15 missiles were found in the containers, officials said.
Before the decision was made yesterday to let the North Korean ship proceed, Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Kerbi summoned U.S. Ambassador Edmund J. Hull to tell him the arms shipment was the "property of the Yemeni government and its armed forces and demanded that the United States should hand the shipment over to Yemen," the official Saba news agency reported.
"The weapons contained in the shipment were to be used for defensive purposes as Yemen has no aggressive intentions toward any country, and owning such weapons would not harm the international peace and se- curity," Saba quoted the official protest given to Hull as saying.
Yemen has 18 Scud missiles in its arsenal, according to arms control groups. The weapons have a range of about 300 miles.
North Korea was silent yesterday about the interception of the ship, but said it had the right to develop weapons to defend itself.
"It is necessary to heighten vigilance against the U.S. strategy for world supremacy and 'anti-terrorism war,'" North Korea's official newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, said in an editorial. "All the countries are called upon to build self-reliant military power by their own efforts."
'Ill-considered'
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat and a senior member of the Armed Services Committee, said he was "puzzled and troubled" by the decision to turn over the Scuds to the Yemeni government.
Yemen "has a questionable record that includes past support of terrorist organizations," Lieberman said. "With thousands of U.S. troops in the region and the possibility of more to come, this decision is ill-considered at best. Now we can only hope it does not come back to haunt us."
Michael O'Hanlon, a defense analyst with the Brookings Institution, said it would be better if Yemen did not import the ballistic missiles, though the country poses no danger to its neighbors. The U.S. must focus on coming up with a comprehensive policy with regard to North Korea, he said.
"I wouldn't worry as much about this," he said, pointing to a "pecking order" for proliferation concerns that begins with nuclear weapons and is then followed by biological and chemical weapons. "I would put ballistic missiles fourth," he said.