An ‘Oops’ Episode, but a Correct Policy : Failure to find war-gas makings on Chinese ship must not end U.S. effort to curb such sales

Oops.

So the Chinese cargo ship Yinhe was not carrying chemicals that Iran could use to make poison gases, despite strong U.S. suspicions to the contrary. At least that’s what an examination of the ship in a Saudi Arabian port found, and there’s no reason to doubt the finding, since American observers were right there when Chinese and Saudi inspectors went through all 600 containers on board. China is now demanding an apology for what it calls U.S. “bullying” tactics. The United States says the whole affair was “unfortunate.” That it was also keenly embarrassing needs no underscoring.

What conclusions are to be drawn from this mini-drama? The most important is that the U.S. government shouldn’t let the egg that is currently on its face deter it from continuing to try to curb the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

The United States thought it had good evidence that among the Yinhe’s cargo that was bound for Iran were the chemicals thiodiglycol and thionyl chloride, used in the manufacture of poison gases. Some U.S. officials still believe in that evidence and think the Yinhe’s crew either dumped the chemicals during the ship’s long voyage to the Persian Gulf or transferred them to another vessel at night.

Outsiders, of course, have no way of knowing just what information the U.S. government relied on or where it came from. The information could have been wrong. It could even have been deliberately planted by China. Certainly, though, it was considered sound. Washington didn’t set out to provoke a diplomatic confrontation with Beijing over a phony issue. In fact, it did its best to deal with the matter quietly, beginning last July. It was China that noisily went public with the whole business. Why?

Maybe it was genuinely upset by the U.S. suspicions. Or maybe it was setting the stage so that in the future it could dismiss as baseless and discriminatory American concerns about certain of its exports. Though it often tries to deny or minimize its activities, China in recent years has been selling a lot of military and dual-use products, including missile technology, to such countries as Iran, Iraq and Pakistan. This runs head-on into a multinational commitment to control the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

That commitment aims ultimately at trying to prevent aggression. It is more than worthwhile; it is vital. The Yinhe incident should not be allowed to become a reason for any easing up on global non-proliferation efforts.