Arms smuggling heightens Iran fears (coming from NK)

SHARJAH, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES -- The warning came almost too late. The freighter ANL Australia had already fired its engines for a 70-mile dash to Iran when customs agents here were alerted to a possible hidden cache of weapons on board.

Inspectors from the United Arab Emirates quickly swarmed the ship and uncovered a truck-size container packed with small arms made in North Korea. Concealed deeper in the ship was the real find: hundreds of crates containing military hardware and a grayish, foul-smelling powder, explosive components for thousands of short-range rockets.

The nature of the cargo, seized in July and described for the first time in interviews with officials and analysts in the UAE and Washington, has raised fears that Iran is ramping up efforts to arm itself and anti-Israel militias in the Middle East. Israeli officials have warned that they may use force to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

The freighter seized in this port enclave was one of five vessels caught this year carrying large, secret caches of weapons apparently intended for the Lebanese group Hezbollah, the Palestinian organization Hamas or the Quds Force, a wing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps that supports insurgents in Iraq, according to U.S. and U.N. officials and intelligence analysts. In three cases, the contraband included North Korean- or Chinese-made components for rockets such as the 122mm Grad, which has a range of up to 25 miles and which Hamas and Hezbollah have fired into Israel.

They were finally discovered at the port of Khor Fakkan in the U.A.E. The officials claimed that there were as many as five such smuggling attempts since early this year.
http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2009/12/04/2009120400315.html

The freighter ANL Australia had already fired its engines for a 70-mile dash to Iran when customs agents here were alerted to a possible hidden cache of weapons on board. Inspectors from the United Arab Emirates quickly swarmed the ship and uncovered a truck-size container packed with small arms made in North Korea. Concealed deeper in the ship was the real find: hundreds of crates containing military hardware and a grayish, foul-smelling powder, explosive components for thousands of short-range rockets. The nature of the cargo, seized in July... has raised fears that Iran is ramping up efforts to arm itself and anti-Israel militias in the Middle East... five vessels caught this year carrying large, secret caches of weapons apparently intended for the Lebanese group Hezbollah, the Palestinian organization Hamas or the Quds Force, a wing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps that supports insurgents in Iraq... In three cases, the contraband included North Korean- or Chinese-made components for rockets such as the 122mm Grad, which has a range of up to 25 miles and which Hamas and Hezbollah have fired into Israel.

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