Foreign minister comes clean after weeks of obfuscation
Minister of Foreign Affairs Paulo Rangel has finally confirmed that a Portuguese-flagged vessel is indeed transporting explosive material for onward transport to Israel.
It has taken weeks for this admission, and considerable pressure from the Left Bloc (which believes the bottom line suggests Portugal is complicit in the ‘ongoing genocide’ of Palestinian people in Gaza).
Paulo Rangel doesn’t appear to read the situation this way.
He has told reporters (for Público and Rádio Renascença): “This ship isn’t heading for Israel, it is heading for two ports on the Adriatic, one in Slovenia and the other in Montenegro. When I spoke, what we knew was that it was carrying explosive material, which is basically the material that would be used by the buyers of this material for their firms’ and companies’ own purposes. Meanwhile, we continued to receive new information and it was established that the material was destined for three countries, one of them Israel” (the other two being Poland and Slovakia).
The MV Kathrin is still in African waters – making its journey surprisingly slowly if ship tracking websites can be confirmed (we say this because it has disappeared entirely from the marine traffic website, but according to vessel finder is due in Montenegro on October 1).
According to Rangel, the German-owned ship will finish its freight in the Adriatic Sea, and then the material will be transported by other boats or by land to its final destinations.
Half the cargo will be delivered to companies that manufacture arms for Israel, he told his interviewers; the other half to companies that manufacture arms in Poland and Slovakia (both countries being members of NATO).
In Rangel’s perspective, despite the delivery, there are prohibitions in force according to international law. In other words, “the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction is out of the equation”.
Even so, he said the Portuguese government is “analysing the situation, and is in contact with the competent authorities.
“This is a very complex legal issue. It is not a simple matter. There is no actual legal reason at the moment to remove the (Portuguese flag from MV Kathrin). There could certainly be political reasons”, he conceded.
How this dancing around the subject convinces those who simply do not want to see Portugal associated in any way to a regime they view as genocidal and despotic remains to be seen.
It is unlikely that Left Bloc MPs will take these assurances without a tart response.
MV Kathrin’s voyage this far has been filled with controversy. The ship was prevented from docking in Namibia due to Israeli link to the cargo and has been the subject of several complaints for allegedly supplying war material to be used in Gaza.
Although Portugal prohibits the export of arms to Israel, the minister seems to be of the opinion that because the explosives carry a ‘dual use’ (they could conceivably be used for, for construction in public works, tunnels, quarries, for example) the prohibition doesn’t stick.
Yet it has been well established that the final destination of the material bound for Israel is a company that manufactures weapons. Mr Rangel said so himself.
Further impinging on the minister’s sense of logic came his own admission that “the (Portuguese) government prohibited this month a plane from flying over the country from the US carrying arms to Israel”.
