
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, March 12, 1992                   TAG: 9203120167
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

U.S. COMMANDER SAYS SHIP SLIPPED BY

The top U.S. commander in the Persian Gulf said Wednesday the North Korean freighter that slipped through a U.S. naval task force to reach Iran with a cargo believed to be ballistic missile equipment evaded "a concerted effort over a period of 10 days" to track it.

Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, who succeeded Army Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf as commander of U.S. Central Command, said his inability to find the cargo ship had dealt a blow to U.S. intelligence, depriving analysts of the opportunity to obtain details of the freighter's cargo.

Officials speaking privately said U.S. intelligence was not given enough warning of the freighter's arrival in the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas to obtain, either by satellite or reconnaissance aircraft, good photographs of its unloading.

"What we have lost by our failure to pick up that ship is we would have been able to alert our intelligence colleagues to determine more specifically what was there," Hoar told a House Armed Services Committee panel.

The freighter, the Dae Hung Ho, docked Monday with what was believed to be a load of North Korean SS-1D missiles, called the Scud-C by the U.S. government. Senior administration officials said they suspect the missiles - a more accurate and longer-range version of the Scuds used by Iraq during the Persian Gulf War - are ultimately destined for Syria.

In what they acknowledged as an attempt to intimidate North Korea, the officials said during the weekend that U.S. warships would intercept and probably board the freighter if it attempted to enter the Persian Gulf. Though they said they had no authority to seize the cargo or prevent the ship from going to Iran, the officials said they expected either to halt the ship or expose irrefutable evidence that North Korea is selling ballistic missiles abroad.

By Tuesday, when it became clear the administration would accomplish neither goal, Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams backpedaled, saying "it would have been nice to have found" the ship but intimating that the Navy had not looked very hard.

Wednesday, in previously scheduled testimony, Hoar made clear that he had directed an intensive search in 800,000 square miles of water and "we were unable to locate that ship, clear and simple." He said he had been ordered to locate and intercept the freighter but never found a trace of it after a report from an allied merchant ship - sources said it came Feb. 28 - that the Dae Hung Ho was south of Sri Lanka and headed toward the Arabian Sea.

The general, who was praised for his forthright manner by committee members, acknowledged that there was "some confusion" about his legal authority to search the freighter and that the subject "was discussed at some length with the lawyers," but he said his intention throughout the episode was to find and intercept the ship.

by CNB