Gas Prince ‘headed for strait’

Press, 4 August 1987, Page 1

Gas Prince ‘headed for strait’

NZPA-Reuter Aboard USS LaSalle The United States Navy said yesterday that the tanker Gas Prince was headed toward the Strait of Honnuz, denying the convoy was already through, and said more Kuwaiti ships soon would be reflagged.' “They haven’t gone through the Strait of Hormuz,” said RearAdmiral Harold Bernsen, commander of the United States Gulf Naval Force. “We’d have to have a flying ship. It’s impossible.” Admiral Bernsen, in remarks to reporters aboard his flagship U.S.S. LaSalle, relayed by the Pentagon in Washington, was denying news reports quoting shipping sources in Kuwait that the Gas Prince had already navigated the Strait, where batteries of Iranian Silkworm missiles are deployed. Iran at the week-end renewed threats to attack the United States convoys in retaliation for the Friday melee in Mecca in which 402 people, 275 of them Iranians, died In fighting with Saudi Arabian security forces. The Gas Prince has passed the halfway point on its 2U day voyage through the Gulf to the Strait, bound for Japan with a load of L.P.G. Admiral Bernsen said that three more Kuwaiti tankers would be re-registered under the American flag within the next 10 days, entitling them to naval escort. That would bring to five

the number of Kuwaiti ships under American protection. Eleven ships in all are to be reflagged. A report by a pool of reporters aboard the U.S.S. Fox, one of three warships escorting the 46,732-ton Gas Prince out of Kuwait, said the voyage so far had been uneventful, although the crew was on high alert Admiral Bernsen said as night descended over the Gulf that there had been no alarms or unusual incidents yesterday as the convoy sailed towards the strait

The Pentagon has remained silent about when the 401,382-ton supertanker Bridgeton would leave Kuwait for Its trip through the Strait of Hormuz. .

Three British warships headed through the Suez Canal yesterday for the Gulf and Indian Ocean area in what officials said was a routine switch with other British vessels in the area.

“It has absolutely nothing to do with the change of climate in that part of the world,” a British embassy official in Cairo told Reuters when asked if the ships’ deployment was linked to heightened tension in the Gulf. Britain last week turned down an American appeal for help in clearing mines from the Gulf, saying further British involvement in the Iran-Iraq war zone would increase tensions with Teheran.

Further reports, page •