Zim arms ship 'expected to have arrived'

Dockworker unions have decided not to call off their plans to prevent a Chinese ship off-loading its Zimbabwe-bound weapons cargo.

This is despite an announcement by the Chinese government that the ship had been recalled.

The International Transport Workers Federation, which has 600 000 members worldwide, says it has not received any assurances from the An Yue Jiang's owners that the ship had been recalled.

The ITWF has been negotiating with the Chinese Ocean Shipping Company (Cosco) to call off the arms delivery mission, in exchange for the ship's safe return to China.

The An Yue Jiang is believed to be carrying three million rounds of assault rifle ammunition, 3 000 mortar rounds and 1 500 rocket-propelled grenades.

Cosco has told the ITWF it "has been actively resolving the matter". The ITF said on Thursday that the ship was still on course for Lobito in southern Angola.

In Beijing, the foreign affairs ministry told a press conference on Thursday that the ship had been recalled. On Monday a similar announcement had been made, but the next day routine SA Air Force patrols photographed the ship sailing around the Cape of Good Hope.

Since Tuesday night the ship has remained off-screen of commercial tracking systems. It has also remained off-screen for the air force, which indicated that 22 Squadron, responsible for patrolling the eastern and western coastlines from Ysterplaat base, north of Cape Town, had been given no task to track the container vessel.

Steve Olley, of the Maritime Intelligence Unit at shipping insurance company Lloyds, said the ship was still untraceable last night.

This could only be because its transponder had been switched off, he said.

ITWF spokesperson Sam Dawson said on Wednesday it was "extremely confident" the ship was headed for Lobito.

Its sources, which ITWF said could not be identified as that would endanger them, calculated the speed of the An Yue Jiang as 11 knots, which meant it would reach Lobito at midday on Friday.

Last night Dawson said: "We think there is a lot of Chinese face-saving going on and so they might well have decided secretly to return."

Should the ITWF get an undertaking that the An Yue Jiang would return, it would allow its members to assist the ship in refuelling on its way back to China, Dawson said.

Lloyds said it was aware of only one other Chinese ship on the southern African coast, which also belonged to Cosco.

Cosco, based in Guangzhou near Hong Kong, owns 667 vessels and states it has 80 000 employees and is worth $17-billion (about R130-billion).

Earlier this week the Chinese embassy had not yet responded to questions of whether the embassy had intervened in the matter and would oppose court orders to impound the ship's cargo.

Meanwhile, the chorus of calls for an arms embargo swelled yesterday with Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu appealing to world leaders to use the UN to stop the supply of weapons to Zimbabwe.

"I join the worldwide calls to stop the supply of weapons to the country by land, sea or air until the political crisis is resolved," the former archbishop of Cape Town said in a statement.

"It is obvious that supplying large quantities of arms at this stage would risk escalating the violence, perhaps resulting in the large-scale loss of life," said Tutu.

A full arms embargo against Zimbabwe was a good idea, US assistant secretary of state for Africa Jendayi Frazer said on Thursday.

She praised South African trade unions' refusal to unload the arms, saying it was a "leadership moment". Frazer was speaking in Pretoria as part of a visit to South Africa and other countries in the region to discuss the post-election crisis in Zimbabwe.

"The credit first and foremost goes to civil society and the unions in South Africa," she said about the Chinese government's announcement yesterday that the ship was returning to China.

• This article was originally published on page 11 of The Cape Argus on April 25, 2008