By Paul Eckert, Asia Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cash-strapped North Korean shippers smuggle narcotics and other contraband, but there's little evidence that the communist state's rusty merchant fleet transports illicit weapons, a report said on Thursday.
British North Korea expert Hazel Smith said her detailed study of North Korean merchant shipping showed a fleet of only 242 ageing vessels faces too much scrutiny in the world's ports to be a significant conduit for weapons of mass destruction.
"We can't really find very much hard evidence of North Korean ships involved in smuggling WMD or components of WMD," Smith, of Cranfield University, told a Washington meeting of think tank East-West Centre.
The weapons of mass destruction trade North Korea conducts, such as missile sales to Iran or Pakistan, is more likely moved by aircraft or allied vessels than on highly suspect North Korean-owned or -flagged ships, her report said.
North Korea came under U.N. sanctions that forbid such trade in missiles following its October 2006 nuclear test.
Her findings, based on tracking ship movements using Lloyds Shipping Register and other insurance databases, call into question the efficacy of the Proliferation Security Initiative, a U.S.-led network of countries launched in 2003 to stop illicit weapons of mass destruction shipments because that effort focuses on shipping, she said.
Anti-proliferation efforts should instead focus on strengthening port controls and negotiating North Korean entry into international arms control treaties as part of a broader disarmament diplomacy with Pyongyang, Smith said.
HIGHLY SUSPECT SHIPS
North Korea's fragmented merchant shipping industry has only a handful of directly state- or provincial-owned vessels, with most run by small owner operators, who lost state subsidies in the early 1990s, said the study.
With underpaid seamen, dilapidated vessels and dire cash and food shortages in North Korea, "it wouldn't be surprising if crew and management would grasp opportunities to earn cash on the side from port calls," Smith told the East-West Centre, which published her report.
But even countries friendly towards North Korea such as China, Russia and Vietnam impose strict inspections on North Korean merchant ships, which are frequently stopped and even detained for serious safety violations, said the report.
In four publicly known cases between 1992-2003 in which North Korean vessels were stopped on suspicion of shipping WMD components or chemicals, none were prosecuted because the cargo was either undetermined, legal or "dual-use," with legal applications Smith said.
North Korean sales of missiles and other weapons materials to tense or unstable parts of the world have long been a major concern of the United States and its allies.
On Wednesday, a U.S. official in Vienna said U.N. inspectors had found growing evidence of covert nuclear activity in Syria. U.S. intelligence suggest that Syria had almost built a North Korean-designed, nuclear reactor meant to yield bomb-grade plutonium before Israel bombed it in 2007.
(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
