Danger zone ahead for tankers

Press, 24 July 1987, Page 6

Danger zone ahead for tankers

NZPA-Reuter Dubai Two Kuwaiti tankers escorted by United States warships yesterday headed into the big danger area of the Gulf after negotiating unmolested the Strait of Hormuz with its Iranian missile sites. Shipping sources said the convoy was_ nearing an area notorious as a prime hunting ground for Iran’s small fleet of highspeed, motor launches manned by revolutionary guards. “There can be no cause for complacency because Iran did not fire its Silkworm missiles,” one shipping source said. “The northern Gulf can be just as treacherous.”

The Chinese-designed missiles, which U.S. officials believe Iran has deployed at the 24-mile-wide strait, were considered the biggest threat to the convoy which formed just outside the Gulf early on Wednesday. Three U.S. warships, with crews at battle stations backed by A.W.A.C.S. air surveillance, escorted the tankers Bridgeton and Gas Prince through the strait in rough seas without challenge from Teheran. Iran’s normal naval patrols in the waterway, through which one-sixth of the non-communist world’s oil is transported, “just melted away”, one shipping source said. The escort operation threatened to bring the United States and Iran

into direct confrontation and sent shivers through world oil markets, forcing « prices higher. i| Washington agreed to put II Kuwaiti tankers, « half the emirate’s fleet, under the U.S. flag to '-4 counter attacks by Iran on ffii ships using Kuwaiti ports. - J Iran has struck at ? Kuwaiti-linked vessels be- AS cause of the emirate’s ; support for Bagdad in the seven-year-old Gulf War. ‘if The convoy was approaching the northern J Gulf where Iranian hit-!'3 and-run motor launch 3a raids have presented a serious threat to shipping f as the toll of vessels hit | by Iran or Iraq in the socalled “tanker war” climbed to more than 330. S Revolutionary guards (t have attacked unprotected -Mt tankers with a combination of small arms fire J and rocket-propelled gre- < nades, but shipping sources said the threat to •4® the high-technology U.S. 3 convoy was more likely to come from suicide raids. ! The two Kuwaiti tankers and three warships — . the destroyer Kidd, guided-missile cruiser Fox : and frigate Crommelin — were expected to be just short of Qatar when sun 3 rose over the Gulf at Jg about 5.40 a.m. local time (1.40 p.m. N.Z. time). || They would have .. • passed under cover of | darkness a trio of offshore » Iranian oil fields — Ros- ■•s tarn, Sassan and Rakhsh S — off the coast of the United Arab Emirates. it