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Nigeria reports seizure of alleged arms shipment from Iran to UN
Wednesday, 17 November 2010 01:01
Nigeria has filed an initial report on its seizure of an alleged arms shipment from Iran with
the U.N. Security Council committee monitoring an arms embargo against the Islamic Republic, a senior minister said Tuesday.Nigerian Foreign Minister Odein Ajumogobia told reporters at U.N. headquarters that security agents are still examining the 13 containers filled with weapons, interrogating an Iranian connected to the consignment, and trying to determine whether the shipment's final destination was Gambia.
An international shipping company based in France, CMA CGM, said it had picked up the containers in which the weapons were hidden in the southern Iranian port of Bandar Abbas. The shipment stopped in Mumbai, India, before heading to Lagos where inspectors found 107mm artillery rockets, rifle rounds and arms as the containers were about to be exported.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who visited Lagos last week, was quoted by the state news agency IRNA on Monday as saying an Iranian implicated in the case had explained the situation to Nigerian authorities and "I think the misunderstandings have been settled in this field." He did not elaborate on the nature of the misunderstanding or how it was resolved.
When asked Tuesday whether there was a "misunderstanding," Ajumogobia said "that's why we filed a report."
"Prima facie there is an embargo," he said, but it depends on "the details" which are still under investigation.
The initial bill of lading, which labeled the contents of the containers as building materials, was consigned to a Nigerian who had a connection to an Iranian national, he said. But when the shipment was seized as it was being exported from Lagos, another bill of lading surfaced which said the containers were destined for Gambia, the minister said.
Ajumogobia, who was in New York to attend a ministerial meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Sudan, said Nigeria has promised to submit a more detailed report to the sanctions committee once the investigation is completed.
"I think they will then deliberate on the report and take whatever steps they deem appropriate," he said.
Source: Canadian Press
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