Official accounts asserting the Arctic Sea cargo ship was hijacked last month fail to answer key questions about its mysterious disappearance and suggest a cover-up, a Russian expert said Tuesday.
Officials in Estonia and Latvia meanwhile said they had received no further information after Russian Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said citizens from the two Baltic states were among eight alleged pirates who seized the ship.
Speaking at a news conference in Moscow, Mikhail Voitenko, editor of the online Sovfrakht Maritime Bulletin, listed a series of reasons why he believed official accounts of the vessel's fate should be viewed with suspicion.
These included:
-- The fact that a week passed between the date the ship was reportedly hijacked by pirates -- July 24 -- and the first public reports about this.
-- The absence of any distress signal despite the ship being equipped with a range of sophisticated tracking devices difficult to shut down simultaneously.
-- The apparent failure by any crew member to use his mobile phone to report any attack despite being in Swedish waters within cell coverage range.
-- The fact that the vessel sailed for several weeks in waters off Europe apparently without detection.
-- The cost of international airforce, naval and intelligence operations to locate the ship vastly exceeded the value of the vessel and cargo combined.
-- The fact that NATO says it worked closely with Russia to locate the ship but has declined to provide details on this unusual joint effort.
"This story is incomprehensible if you try to explain it as a criminal attack or a dispute between business competitors," Voitenko said.
"It makes sense only if looked at as a conflict between states... I believe states, state interests, were involved in what happened."
Voitenko, an experienced seaman and respected expert on shipping affairs, said he believed the crew of the Arctic Sea got caught up in "a big game" between the governments of several countries.
He admitted he could not say what the object of this game was.
But the level of expertise required to steer the Arctic Sea through seas near Europe apparently undetected, and the paucity of public information on the ship's status for weeks, pointed to involvement by governments.
"I believe the countries involved found a solution and agreed to 'keep it in the family' without having the time to find a plausible explanation" for the mysterious voyage, Voitenko said.
In Riga, a Latvian foreign ministry spokesman said authorities there had received no more details on alleged involvement of Latvian citizens in hijacking the Arctic Sea.
"We've asked the Russian Federation for an official confirmation that Latvian citizens have been arrested, but we have not received a reply," Latvian foreign ministry spokesman Gints Jerohimovics told AFP.
In Tallin, a spokesman for the Estonian state prosecutor's office gave a similar report.
"Estonian authorities have not been presented any official information so far about the possibility that some people from Estonia might be related to the case," the spokesman, Gerrit Maesalu, told AFP.
In Brussels, a NATO spokeswoman, Carmen Romero, said the alliance had "closely monitored" the situation situation and remained in contact with Russia about it.
She declined however to specify exactly what role NATO played in the search for the Arctic Sea.
Source: AFP
