- LONDON (Reuters) - The U.S.
Navy is seeking more merchant ships to carry a large quantities of ammunition
to the Gulf for arrival in November and December, shipping tender documents
seen by Reuters show.
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- The Navy has also placed an order to shift quantities
of ammunition between Gulf ports, as the United Nations moves closer to
a new resolution on disarming Iraq.
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- One of the orders shows the Navy's Military Sealift Command
is seeking a vessel to move 550 containers of ammunition and explosives
from the U.S. East Coast to four ports in the Red Sea and Gulf.
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- "That's a big chunk of ammo'," said one shipping
source who has chartered ammunition ships for the British Ministry of Defense.
He estimated the vessel was capable of carrying up to 10,000 tons.
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- The Military Sealift Command is charged with transporting
armor and military supplies for the U.S. armed forces.
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- The vessel loading on October 31 is to discharge at the
various ports between November 19 and December 3.
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- In shipping industry terms, the movement of 550 so-called
twenty-foot-container equivalent units is small. The largest freighters
can carry up to 7,000 of the units, but moving ammunition and explosives
is done on a far smaller scale.
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- For safety reasons ammunition-carrying ships require
special ventilation, temperature control and fire-fighting equipment and
additional features, experts say.
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- The Command is also seeking a roll-on-roll-off merchant
vessel to carry 28,000 square feet of "rolling stock and track vehicles"
from northern Europe to the Gulf in November.
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- The latest commercial orders bring the known number of
merchant ships requested to move tanks, helicopters and other military
supplies to the Gulf to eight.
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- Separately, the Sealift Command is seeking a ship to
shift 197 containers of ammunition weighing some 2,700 tons between one
unidentified Gulf port and two others.
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- The ship will be armed with machine guns placed on the
"starboard and port side of wing bridge," the tender reads.
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- Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Friday Russia
and the four other U.N. Security Council permanent members had moved closer
to agreement on a new resolution aimed at disarming Iraq, which Washington
suspects of development weapons of mass destruction. But he said serious
differences still had to be worked out.
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