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Did Canada Get Point In 'GTS Katie' Incident?
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| Foreign-Flag Ship Under Charter To Military Refused To Return Supplies | |||
Tensions eased Aug. 10 when the ship arrived under tow in a Quebec port after being seized in international waters by Canadian Navy commandos, but the case was far from closed. The ship was the GTS Katie, a 750-foot, 36,000-ton roll-on/roll-off vessel owned in Annapolis, Md., by Third Ocean Marine Navigation and registered in St. Vincent and Grenadines. The GTS Katie was carrying Canadian military cargo from Greece to Montreal under a pass-through charter. The cargo, worth an estimated (U.S.) $151 million, included 580 tanks and other vehicles and 390 containers of ammunition and explosives, all used by Canadian forces during the war in Kosovo in the Balkans. The controversy began in mid-July when Third Ocean Marine Navigation reportedly told the ship's Croatian captain, Vitaly Khlebnikov, not to proceed to port in Montreal until the company had been paid more than $200 thousand Third Ocean Marine Navigation said was owed by Andromeda Navigation of Montreal. Andromeda had been awarded the cargo charter by Canada's Department of National Defense , but the company subcontracted to another Montreal firm, SDV Logistics, which in turn arranged for the GTS Katie to haul the cargo. Meanwhile, one published report in Canada said the officers and crew members aboard the GTS Katie had been owed an estimated $500 thousand in back wages. The report also quoted an Andromeda Navigation executive as saying that Third Ocean Marine Navigation may have been trying to obtain "unreasonable payments" directly from the Canadian defense agency. Third Ocean Marine Navigation said both charges were "absolutely, positively not true." The GTS Katie-with three Canadian soldiers aboard to guard the cargo-remained in international waters 140 miles off Newfoundland for two weeks, shadowed by the Canadian war ship HMCS Athabaska. On Aug. 3, the ship was boarded by the Canadian Navy. Two Canadian Navy vessels then escorted the GTS Katie toward the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the St. Lawrence River. Low on fuel, the GTS Katie was towed to the Quebec port of Becancour. The ship's seizure by the military prompted a response from Captain Julian P. "Flip" Walters, identified in press accounts as chairman, managing director, and chief executive of Third Ocean Marine Navigation. In a letter to General Larry Lashkevich at the Department of National Defense, Walters charged that the armed boarding party had acted "with complete disregard for navigational safety and good seamanship practice." Walters objected to the lashing of the GTS Katie's anchors "to prevent any accidental dropping" as the ship entered the St. Lawrence River. He said that, had the ship's engines failed for any reason, the officers and crew would not have been able to "prevent drifting into some innocent Canadian town" or into another vessel. "With such conduct, we hereby disavow any responsibility for any and all adverse consequences for the ship, her owners, master and crew," he wrote. "Please try to reassert some semblance of sanity and professionalism back into this situation before there is a real accident." Walters later charged that Canadian soldiers had threatened the safe navigation of the GTS Katie by "questioning and delaying the implementation of every order of the master ... while they analyzed the orders and evaluated his judgment." Another Third Ocean Marine Navigation principal, Peter Margan, addressed the issue of back pay for the ship's complement. "We have no problem with our employees," Margan told a Canadian reporter. "It has nothing to do with the dispute." But Rita Charola, traffic coordinator for Andromeda Navigation, said her company had paid Third Ocean Marine Navigation what it owed. She suggested that Third Ocean Marine had triggered the standoff to collect money to satisfy its wage debt, and one report said Charola had speculated that the crew was holding the GTS Katie hostage. Reached for comment by the Canadian reporter, the London-based International Transport Workers Federation supported Andromeda's claims. ITF spokesman Yuri Bougaichouk said the officers and crew aboard the GTS Katie had not been paid for about 10 months. "I wouldn't be surprised if the current figure is up to about half a million," Bougaichouk said. But Margan said the employees had been paid in Greece and were to be paid again in New York City, where the GTS Katie was to have gone after discharging its cargo in Montreal. The ITF's Bougaichouk said Third Ocean Marine Navigation is involved in another pay dispute aboard a FOC ship, the GTS Krista, which Bougaichouk said was under arrest in Croatia. "They're involved in labor disputes because they haven't paid their employees," the ITF spokesman said. Margan confirmed that the GTS Katie had been seized in Croatia, but he said the arrest was linked to debt incurred by the ship's previous owner, a company called Blascow in the former Soviet Union. Bougaichouk said the ITF has a six-inch-thick GTS Katie file dating to September 1999, but he doubted the ship had been held hostage by its crew. "I would be amazed if the crew was able to pull this off without instructions from the owners and the captain," he said. "Using common sense, I can't imagine a crew could operate that way--we would never issue any advice along those lines. The GTS Katie was arrested in pay disputes in June 2000 in Thessaloniki, Greece, and in Montenegro last fall. Margan acknowledged that the company had been in a dispute with the ITF in Greece, but he said it involved only three crew members who had not been paid because, Margan said, they had refused to work. Third Ocean Marine Navigation posted a bond for the money, and the case is now before Greek courts, Margan said, adding that one arrest had been instigated by an Andromeda agent who had not been paid. The GTS Katie is manned by 23 officers and crew members from the Ukraine and Croatia. "These people are quite desperate, Bougaichouk said. "many of them have been on the ship for 12 months." | |||
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