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Tuesday May 30, 6:54 PMJapan inspects 'suspicious ship' in Asian maritime security drill(Kyodo) _ The Japan Coast Guard inspected on Tuesday a vessel playing the role of a ship suspected of smuggling goods off the coast of Shimane Prefecture in a joint maritime security drill.At around 11 a.m., three Coast Guard patrol vessels and a helicopter encircled the U.S. Coast Guard ship Sequoia, which was acting as the suspicious vessel, about 50 kilometers off Shimane and ordered it to stop. Coast Guard officers with bullet-proof jackets approached the vessel with a raft and boarded it for inspection. The drill was shown to the media. Satoshi Nakashima of the Japan Coast Guard's eighth regional headquarters said the drill went "smoothly." "We'd like to further strengthen our ties between each country," he said. Japan, the United States, Canada and Russia are participating in the joint drill which started last Saturday and runs through Thursday. China and South Korea agreed to take part in the drill last September but canceled shortly before its start apparently out of concern it might be regarded as targeting North Korean vessels. In the drill scenario, a ship suspected of smuggling goods and people is denied entry to the port of Shanghai and then tracked by the coast guards of the participating countries. They also share information on tracing the vessel. The original drill scenario said the suspicious vessel is a cargo ship from a country suspected of proliferating weapons of mass destruction, but it was later altered. |
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