PHNOM PENH, Oct. 3 (Xinhua) -- A Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)'s ship seized off Egypt with a huge cache of weapons had illegally flown Cambodian flag, a Cambodian foreign ministry spokesman said in a statement late Monday.
Chum Sounry, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, said Cambodia had decided to terminate the contract with the International Ship Registry of Cambodia (ISROC) as a sole and exclusive flag state administration in Cambodian ship registration since Aug. 2015 and asked ISROC to discontinue registering the Cambodian-flagged ships since then.
He added that Cambodia also informed the Secretary-General of the International Maritime Organization in Aug. 2016 that the country had decided to close down the ship registration since Aug. 2015, and to facilitate the ship owners, whose ships still had valid registry certificates with Cambodian flag, Cambodia allowed their ships to be operated under Cambodian flag till those certificates were expired which was due at the end of Aug. 2016.
"Any ship claimed to be under Cambodian flag after this due date are considered illegal and subjected to applicable international law and regulations," Chum Sounry said.
"Therefore, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation wishes to affirm that the flying of the Cambodian flag of convenience by any ship including the above-mentioned vessel is illegal," he said.
The spokesman's statement came after the Washington Post published on Monday an article entitled "A North Korean ship was seized off Egypt with a huge cache of weapons destined for a surprising buyer".
In the article, it reported that the bulk freighter named Jie Shun was flying Cambodian colors but had sailed from DPRK...and that the Egyptian customs swarmed the vessel and discovered, concealed under bins of iron ore, a cache of more than 30,000 rocket-propelled grenades. Enditem
