BICOM

The Washington Post reported yesterday that the Egyptian army tried to import $23m worth of grenades from North Korea before the shipment was thwarted by U.S. intelligence services.

The deal led to a UN investigation and a series of US complaints over Egypt’s attempts to purchase North Korean weapons despite UN sanctions prohibiting such transactions.

The deal was stopped after US intelligence officials identified a freighter, the Jie Shun, which was sailing under a Cambodian flag, as a North Korean vessel en route to Suez. A message was then sent from Washington to Cairo, warning about the ship’s North Korean origin and crew and the fact that it’s cargo was hidden under tarpaulin.

The ship had set sail from the North Korean port of Haeju, on July 23 2016, with a 23-member crew.

According to the report, when Egyptian customs officials searched the freighter in Egyptian waters they discovered 30,000 rocket-propelled grenades hidden under bins of iron ore. The UN report later described  the discovery as the “largest seizure of ammunition in the history of sanctions” against Pyongyang.

The UN investigation uncovered a complex arrangement in which Egyptian business executives ordered millions of dollars worth of North Korean arms from the country’s military while also taking action to keep the transaction secret.

Following the report, the Trump administration decided in July to withhold $290m in military aid to Egypt due to its deals with North Korea, which the report said had become “a kind of global eBay for vintage and refurbished Cold War-era weapons.”

The US State Department said at the time that aid to Egypt was being reduced because of what it called the country’s lack of progress on human rights and a new law restricting the activities of non-governmental organisations.

The Washington Post said that the story sheds light on the “little-understood global arms trade that has become an increasingly vital financial lifeline for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in the wake of unprecedented economic sanctions.”

Egypt still maintains diplomatic ties with Pyongyang, despite being a major US aid recipient and the two countries share a history of military-to-military ties dating back to the 1970s.

Mohammed el-Menshawy, an Egyptian analyst base in Washington told the Associated Press: “The recent cut in the U.S. military aid to Egypt was a clear message to Cairo: You choose us or North Korea, you cannot have military relations with both of us. Cairo got the message and it cut ties with North Korea.”

North Korea also has close military ties with Iran and Syria.