By Tito Drago
MADRID, Dec 9 2003 (IPS)

The U.S. government needs to publicly explain why the missile shipment on a vessel intercepted a year ago on the high seas by the Spanish navy ended up in Libya, a spokesman from Spain’s Defence Ministry told IPS Tuesday.

The official was referring to declarations by sources from NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) to the Madrid daily ‘El Mundo’ that claim 15 complete Scud missiles, a set of conventional warheads and 85 containers of chemical products – some 20 holding nitric acid – were ultimately delivered to Libya under a Washington decision.

The episode began Dec. 5, 2002, when U.S. intelligence services informed Madrid about the route of the freighter named So San, suspected of trafficking weapons and at the time crossing a zone under Spain’s authority in the Indian Ocean.

Four days later, a Spanish frigate and warship intercepted the So San after ordering the captain to halt and firing warning shots. The vessel was found to be under a Cambodian flag.

The weapons and chemicals, which came from North Korea, did not appear on the ship’s manifest, which showed only that the merchant vessel was carrying bags of cement.

That same day, Spain handed the ship over to the U.S. navy, and the initial official explanations out of Washington and Madrid said the missiles might have been headed for the Al-Qaeda network that the U.S. government holds responsible for the Sep 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

But just hours later the U.S. administration then took Spain by surprise by turning the So San over to Yemen, explaining that the cargo was actually a legal shipment of weapons purchased from North Korea by the government of Yemen.

The hand-over was preceded by a telephone conversation between U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney and the Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

When that conversation was made public, the White House justified the move saying that Yemen is a friendly nation.

So what initially came off as a brilliant Spanish military operation to prevent illegal trade in weapons of mass destruction was reduced to a suspected manipulation directed from Washington, with Madrid in the role of receiving and carrying out orders that were not very clear in their purpose.

The NATO sources cited in El Mundo said that at the time the United States was secretly negotiating the possibility that Libya would accept in exile then-president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein.

Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi played the role of go-between in the previous Gulf War, in 1991, assisting in Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait.

"Qaddafi wanted the missiles and Yemen acted as intermediary. In the context of gestures with Libya, it was decided to look the other way, given that there was no international regulation that impeded it," says the newspaper, citing sources from the Pentagon (U.S. Defence Department).

Today, as it was a year ago, Madrid’s reaction of disappointment was immediate but not very explicit, because Prime Minister José María Aznar continues as a staunch, unconditional supporter of the policies of his U.S. counterpart, President George W. Bush..

That is why the opposition United Left (IU) will petition Spain’s Defence Minister Federico Trillo to inform parliament about the country’s participation, "past and present", in relation to the case of the weapons shipment.

Madrid’s handling of the issue "is one more demonstration of (Aznar’s) erratic foreign policy and his troubling submission and total dependence on the policy marked by the U.S.," IU general coordinator Gaspar Llamazares told IPS.

"The IU is highly concerned that Spain is extending political and commercial ties to a country that does not provide any democratic guarantees," like Libya, he added.

Neither the government nor the opposition and civil society organisations categorise the Qaddafi regime as terrorist, and they agree on the need to facilitate his integration into the international community.

A spokesperson from the Spanish foreign ministry said in a conversation with IPS that Aznar visited Libya a few weeks ago and that relations with Qaddafi are cordial.

Spain’s dialogue with Libya occurs in a critical way, with Madrid insisting on the need for a clear fight against terrorism and for reinforcing Euro-Mediterranean relations – and "things are following that path," said the official.

Days earlier, Foreign Minister Ana Palacio stated that Spain’s strategic direction is for the normalisation of international relations with Libya.

These relations are not just political and diplomatic. Last week the Libyan government authorised a concession for natural gas and petroleum exploration in its territory to an international consortium that forms part of the multinational Spanish-Argentine Repsol-YPF.

The company extracts some 200,000 barrels of crude a day in that country and aims for 275,000 barrels daily in 2004.

Spain has not drawn up a list of countries it considers terrorist, noted the foreign ministry spokesperson.

But the United States does, and Libya figures on that list and is subject to a commercial and military embargo. No U.S. company is authorised to sell weapons to Libya directly or indirectly, nor to facilitate delivery of arms.

When the United Nations Security Council lifted the sanctions against Libya, applied for the case of the Lockerbie airline bombing, U.S. Ambassador James Cunningham abstained from the vote.

Cunningham said that Washington did not want to give the idea that it believed Libya had done an about face, because, said the ambassador, the country continued to try to obtain weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles.

But things appear to have changed radically, given that the weapons shipment intercepted by Spain and which ended up in Libya includes such weapons of mass destruction.

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