By
The Associated Press
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - A ship smuggling thousands of tons of Iraqi oil sank in the Persian Gulf, a U.S. Navy official said yesterday, and authorities here said some of the fuel spilled into the water.
Emergency crews were trying to contain the spill more than 24 hours after the ship sank, an official at the Dubai Port Control said yesterday. He said helicopters were at the scene, some 20 miles off the coast.
A port official in Sharjah, an emirate about 20 miles north of Jebel Ali, said a stretch of polluted waters had been found off the coast of Sharjah.
The Georgian-flagged vessel went down Saturday near Dubai's Jebel Ali port with 3,850 tons of fuel oil on board, said Cmdr. Jeff Gradeck, spokesman for the Navy's Bahrain-based 5th Fleet.
The Emirate's Federal Environmental Agency, however, put the fuel figure at only 1,430 tons.
Gradeck said the ship had been intercepted several days earlier for violating U.N. sanctions against Iraq. "The ship was en route to a holding area in international waters for sanction-busting ships when it sank," he said.
After the ship was damaged by rough waves, two U.S. ships in the area helped the 11-member Iraqi crew stabilize the vessel, he said. But by Saturday afternoon, the ship began sinking, Gradeck said, adding that the Emirates' coast guard rescued the crew.
Under sanctions imposed by the United Nations following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, Iraq can sell oil only on condition that most of the proceeds are used to meet Iraqis' basic needs.
Oil smuggled out outside the so-called oil-for-food deal - and the vessels carrying the illegal shipments - are auctioned off.
Ships loaded with smuggled Iraqi oil routinely pass through the waters off the Emirates. But after an oil barge believed to be carrying Iraqi fuel spilled fuel off the Emirates in 1998 and contaminated some nine miles of coastline, the Emirates launched a crackdown on sanctions-busting tankers.
In January last year, a tanker carrying 1,080 tons of crude oil from Abu Dhabi to Somalia sank in bad weather four miles off the Emirates' coast, spilling about 330 short tons of crude.
