Daily Mirror (Sri Lanka)

North Korea demands return of Us-seized cargo ship

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SEOUL AFP MAY14,2019 - North Korea on Tuesday demanded the return of a cargo ship seized by Washington last week for violating internatio­nal sanctions, calling it an “unlawful and outrageous act”.

On Friday, the US Justice Department said it had taken possession of the North Korearegis­tered bulk carrier M/V Wise Honest, one year after it was detained in Indonesia, citing illicit sanctions-busting activities.

It was the first time a North Korean cargo vessel had been seized by the US for sanctions violations, after several years of high seas cat-and-mouse games in which Korean shippers disguised vessels, used false flags and turned off their tracking transponde­rs to avoid discovery.

A spokesman for the North’s foreign ministry slammed the move on Tuesday, saying it was an “outright denial” of the spirit of a statement signed by leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump at their landmark summit in Singapore last June.

“The United States committed an unlawful and outrageous act of dispossess­ing our cargo ship... linking the ship of the United Nations Security Council,” the spokesman said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

The move was an “extension of the American method” of seeking to bring Pyongyang “to its knees” through maximum pressure, he said. The North Korean cargo ship,(middle), was towed into the Port of Pago Pago, American Samoa (Daily Mail). to the ‘sanctions resolution­s’

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