Investigations of North Korea missile ship continue

President Ricardo Martinelli and Security Minister Jose Raul Mulino went Tuesday to examine the cargo and two containers of military equipment were discovered while police officers continue to unload the cargo.

The 38 crew of the vessel are being held in a Panamanian navy base, while the ship's captain attempted to commit suicide when the vessel was stopped as it prepared to enter the Panama Canal. The vessel was initially detained on suspicion of carrying narcotics.

The Chong Chon Gang was tracked leaving Vostochny, Russia on 12 April, and was next registered arriving in Balboa, on the Panama Canal's Pacific side, on 31 May, and crossed the waterway the next day with a stated destination of Havana, Cuba. She was tracked arriving from Cuba in the proximity of Manzanillo, on the Atlantic entrance of the Panama Canal.

According to Stockholm Peace Research Institute, reported the British website Orange, the Chong Chon Gang had been previously involved in narcotics and small arms trafficking. She was implicated in smuggling in Ukraine in 2010 and a year earlier, in 2009, the vessel came under a pirate attack 400 miles off the coast of Somalia, says the Institute.

President Martinelli tweeted a photo of the suspected weapons cache, which weapons experts have identified as a Soviet-built radar control system for surface-to-air missiles.

The US State Department on Tuesday praised Panama's decision to detain and search the ship and said it was ready to help if asked. Panama called Tuesday for UN investigators to inspect the shipment of suspected weapons parts aboard the vessel.

Panama's Security Minister Jose Raul Mulino told RPC radio that the affair now is a matter for United Nations investigators. Presidential spokesman Luis Eduardo Camacho said an examination of the ship by weapons specialists may take as long as a week. There had been no reaction from Cuba or North Korea, Panamanian officials said.

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