Yemen Says No Result of Tanker Blast Investigation Yet

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, October 11, 2002

Yemen Says No Result of Tanker Blast Investigation Yet

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Yemeni Minister of Transport and Maritime Affairs Said Yafhi Thursday refuted the reports that Yemeni officials do not rule out a terror act behind the explosion of the French oil tanker Limberg in Yemen.

"Yemen accepts the results of the ongoing investigations by the joint Yemeni-French-US team," Yafhi, who is also the chief of the fact-finding committee on the incident, told a press conference in Mukla city Thursday afternoon.

Meanwhile, he urged reporters to be accurate and fair while covering the incident.

As for the results of the investigations, the Yemeni minister said that some members of the joint investigation team boarded the tanker Thursday morning and were still there.

"We reached agreement to let all investigators go on board the tanker to carry out a collective and integrated investigation," he added.

The French oil tanker Limburg, which was coming from Iran to the Arabian Sea port of Mina al-Dabah to load crude, caught fire on Friday morning, three miles away from an oil-exporting platform in the Ashahr district in Yemen's eastern province of Hadramaut.

Twelve people aboard the tanker sustained burns and another person was missing when a small booby-trapped boat rammed into the tanker.

French officials considered the explosion a terror attack, saying the boat approaching the super tanker "seems to be an attack in the same style as the USS Cole."

But Yemen officials said they had not yet obtained evidence for such a conclusion. They initially viewed the explosion as an "accident." A joint operation team has been set up to investigate into the cause of the explosion.

Yafhi said Yemen and France have signed a three-point memorandum of understanding (MOU), under which the two sides will carry out joint investigations, collect evidence jointly, and sign a report on the final results of their activity.

The MOU will govern the Yemeni-French relations in the coming period, Yafhi pointed out.

As for the damages suffered by Yemen from the incident, Yafhi said "they were economic and environmental ones and had not been assessed so far."

Experts from the International Maritime Organization and a regional institution for protection of ecology in the Red Sea and Aden Gulf will start arriving in Yemen on Friday to assess the damages.

Yemen has the right to claim compensation for the damage, the minister told reporters. It will do so through friendly way or courts, if the first way was blocked, he said.

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