A team of United Nations experts was in Havana last week to talk about the Cuban weaponry found aboard a North Korea-bound freighter this summer, showing that Cuban officials have at agreed to discuss the shipment, according to a Japanese media report.
Luxembourg Ambassador Sylvie Lucas, chair of the U.N. Security Council committee that supervises sanctions on North Korea, told the Japanese Kyodo News Service that the team of experts who advise the committee had returned from Cuba on Friday.
Kyodo quoted Lucas as saying that the team went to Cuba for “consultations on the consignments discovered” on the North Korean freighter Chong Chon Gang.
She gave no other details, but the visit clearly signaled that the Cuban government has been cooperating with the U.N. inquiry into the case since the experts could not have flown to Havana without government approval.
The Chong Chon Gang was seized by Panama authorities in July on a tip that it was carrying illegal drugs as it prepared to cross the Panama Canal on a voyage from Cuba to North Korea. Instead, searchers uncovered Cuban weaponry hidden under 10,000 tons of sugar.
Havana later confirmed the ship carried 420 tons of weapons but claimed it was “obsolete” equipment on its way to North Korea to be upgraded and returned to Cuba. Independent reports said some of the weaponry was in “mint” condition.
