A North Korean ship intercepted in Indian waters off the Andaman Islands is being moved to the Indian mainland where investigations will continue, the coast guard said Thursday. The ship was intercepted last week after dropping anchor in Indian territorial waters without permission and failing to respond to signals, coast guard officials said earlier.
Government officials have directed authorities in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to shift the cargo ship to the port of Kakinada in the eastern state of Andhra Pradesh. "Our coast guard vessel will be escorting the North Korean vessel up to Kakinada," the commander of the Andaman and Nicobar coast guard region, K.R. Nautiyal, told AFP, adding that the ship set sail on Wednesday.
Preliminary investigations have not found anything suspicious onboard the ship, which is loaded with sugar and has 39 crew members. A source involved in the investigation said the cargo might be unloaded in the larger port of Kakinada and searched more thoroughly - something that could not have be done in the Andaman islands.
The interception came days after a report in the Sydney Morning Herald, quoting Myanmar defectors, said Pyongyang was helping Myanmar build a secret nuclear reactor and plutonium extraction plant for an atomic bomb. Pyongyang is seen as a proliferator of nuclear and missile technology with countries like Iran and Syria named by senior US officials as buyers.
Two nuclear scientists from the Bhava Atomic Research Centre (BARC), who have also conducted a preliminary investigation of the ship, have said it does not contain any trace of nuclear components, the investigation source said. The ship set sail from Thailand on July 27 bound for Iraq and had halted en route in Singapore on July 30, the coast guard previously said.
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