MOSCOW - Port logs for the MV Arctic Sea, the small Turkish-built,
Russian-owned vessel recently reported at the center of an alleged piracy and
extortion attempt, reveal that the timber-carrier has been making regular
voyages between Finnish ports and either Algerian or French Mediterranean ports
for the past three years. However, the disappearance reported to have occurred
between July 24 and August 24, triggering a spate of feverish speculation in
Tel Aviv and London about missile smuggling, appears not to be the first time
the Arctic Sea has gone missing; or at least gone absent from the
maritime record known as the international Automatic Identification System
(AIS).
Each year recently, according to AIS records, the vessel appears to be missing
from the logs in the Mediterranean for up to 20 days at a time. In April this
year, the Arctic Sea is missing from AIS port-call records between April
1, when it transited the Gibraltar
Straits, moving east, and April 11, when it returned through the straits,
moving west. A similar gap in the log records appeared a year earlier, between
February 13, 2008, when the Arctic Sea sailed east past Gibraltar into
the Mediterranean, and 20 days later, on March 4, when it transited the
Gibraltar Straits moving west.
In 2007, the gap in the logs appears between April 26, when the vessel entered
the Mediterranean, and May 14, when it exited. In all cases, the vessel appears
to have taken on cargo at Loviisa and Kotka (Finland), and Tallinn (Estonia).
Maritime industry experts say that gaps in AIS records and port logs may not be
of any significance, and don't necessarily warrant suspicion. According to one
source, AIS coverage is not universal, and AISLive must obtain the data from
traffic management authorities, not all of whom make them public. He speculates
that a "missing" period of 20 days "between Gibraltar transits would fit
perfectly with the vessels voyaging to Algeria or another North African port
(Egypt also buys a lot of timber from Russia, Baltic states and Finland);
discharging; and returning back to Gibraltar. North African ports are not
renowned for the speed of discharge."
Although the Arctic Sea has regularly identified port-calls at such
Algerian ports as Bejaia and Oran, it has not been identified over the past
several years at other North African country ports. The expert source cautions
against speculation:
AIS is intended for ships to be able to identify
each other, and for VTMS [Vehicle Traffic Management Systems] to recognize
ships. It is not, and was never intended to be, a universal tracking system;
its use for that purpose is highly flawed. Not every port is equipped with a
VTMS or an AIS system, and so there will be no reports available when the ship
calls to those ports. There will also be times when even where a port AIS
system is in place it will be inoperative because of breakdown of the system or
of individual ships' AIS. There would also be good commercial reasons for a
ship to switch its AIS off so as to avoid its position being known to
charterers.
Captain Victor Karpenkov, the Arkhangelsk-based
manager of the Russian division of Solchart, owner of the Arctic Sea',
said the gaps in the AIS records are "yet another hoax, after the claim that
the ship was carrying the S-300 anti-missile defense system. I won't even
comment on this, because obviously this sounds foolish". He was asked to say
where the Arctic Sea was in the three periods that are missing AIS
locations. He referred the questions to Solchart headquarters in Helsinki.
In Helsinki, two of the registered owners of the Solchart group, Victor
Matveyev and Vladimir Voronov, were also asked to say where the Arctic Sea
was during the three "missing" periods identified by AIS. Voronov said: "I am
not in a position to tell you anything", and referred calls to Matveyev. Asked
twice to identify the ports of call in the three periods, Matveyev hung up the
telephone without answering.
The Russian authorities have sought this week to end speculation about the Arctic
Sea with official releases. This week, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
termed reports in the Israeli and UK press, claiming the vessel had been
carrying a secret cargo of missiles for Iran, "a complete lie". The
Investigation Committee of the federal prosecutor-general announced that
"investigators have thoroughly searched the cargo on board the ship, and found
only lumber. No cargo has been found except that registered in the consignment
log." The vessel is due to arrive at Novorossiysk this week.
Kaliningrad sources add that it was improbable that secret cargoes could have
been loaded at Kaliningrad, where the Arctic Sea was berthed at the
start of July, because getting such cargoes from Russia into Kaliningrad would
require overland transit by rail through European Union and Lithuanian
monitoring. When the Arctic Sea was berthed at Kaliningrad between July
1 and 17 - according to the AIUS logs - it was the first time recorded for the
vessel at that port in the past five years.
Speculation that the Arctic Sea had disappeared, or was missing, as the
media reported last month, have been rejected by a range of Russian government
sources, as well as by the maritime authorities in Malta, where the vessel is
registered. What this means is that the secret services of several governments
were not as blinded by the lack of AIS plots as the media were.
Dmitry Rogozin, Russia's Ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO), has pointed out that the press speculation was "nothing more than
Russophobia. Kaliningrad is rubbish, too. If the Finns packed guided missiles
in along with the timber, that would be up to them. Any information vacuum
always tends to be filled with the wildest rumors."
According to Rogozin, from August 11, NATO and Russia were jointly cooperating
in tracking the vessel by satellite and other means. "The next day the head of
our military liaison group with NATO, General Victor Sinoyev, rang me. NATO
colleagues had sent him the coordinates of a ship they believed to be the Arctic
Sea. I immediately passed the data on to the head of the General Staff
and the head of the fleet in Moscow. They tallied with the data our own people
had gathered by then. Then we refined the coordinates with NATO on a daily
basis: the speed of the vessel, the direction. The Arctic Sea was
steering towards Brazil but suddenly changed course at the Cape Verde islands
and headed full steam for the African coast. We assumed the pirates were headed
for Senegal, Gambia or Guinea-Bissau. It was our task to stop them from
reaching the coast," Rogozin said.
The Russian government officials have had more experience than their NATO
counterparts in the difficulties of rescuing seamen held hostage on the African
shore, because two episodes remain fresh in memory. Nigerian government
officials held 12 Russian crewmen hostage for two years after they had been
taken off the African Pride, an oil tanker accused of involvement in
local government-sponsored oil smuggling. They were released in December 2005
after a secret ransom was paid to the Nigerians. In August 2006, Guinean
government officials briefly detained in Conakry port the Luchegorsk,
also an oil tanker, and its 19-man crew, with the aim of extracting a ransom.
John Helmer has been a Moscow-based correspondent since 1989,
specializing in the coverage of Russian business.
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