ADEN/WASHINGTON, 12 December 2002 — The United States backed down from a standoff with Yemen yesterday when it announced the release of a ship carrying Scud missiles intended for the Yemeni Army.

The So San, intercepted by Spain in the Arabian Sea on Monday and handed over to the United States, was allowed to sail for Yemen, the official Yemeni news agency Saba said.

“There is no provision under international law prohibiting Yemen from accepting delivery of missiles from North Korea,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.

“While there is authority to stop and search, in this instance there is no authority to seize a shipment of Scud missiles from North Korea to Yemen and therefore the merchant vessel is being released,” Fleischer said at a press briefing in the White House.

Yemen gave Washington assurances that it “would not transfer these missiles to anyone,” Fleischer said in an apparent reference to US fears that the Scuds could be mounted with warheads filled with chemical, biological or nuclear materials by Iraq or another country.

“US Vice President Dick Cheney told Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh that President George W. Bush ordered the shipment to be returned,” Saba said.

Yemen’s foreign minister, Abu Bakr Al-Kerbi, told the Cable News Network that his government was satisfied with the way the matter was resolved. “Yemen is a partner with the international community and with the United States in combating terrorism...and there is no possibility at all of letting these weapons fall into any other hands,” Al-Kerbi was quoted as saying.

After the ship was seized, Yemen protested to the United States and Spain, saying the missiles had been bought for its army from North Korea.

Independent defense experts said North Korea was probably not violating any law by transporting the cargo, although Spanish Defense Minister Federico Trillo said Spain had had the right to board the vessel because it was not flagged.

Reclusive North Korea is not a member of the Missile Control Technology Regime that controls exports and Yemen said the shipment was part of an agreement with North Korea reached some time ago.

North Korea, declared part of Washington’s “axis of evil” along with Iran and Iraq, drew sharp words from US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, visiting Djibouti, across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen.

“They continue to be the single largest proliferator of ballistic missile technology on the face of the earth, and they are putting into the hands of many countries the technologies and capabilities which have the potential for killing hundreds of thousands of people,” Rumsfeld told reporters.

The seizure, in which Spanish Marine special forces dropped onto the deck from helicopters, took place in international waters near Yemen, site of the October 2000 attack on the American warship USS Cole.

Trillo told a news conference in Madrid that 15 Scud missiles, 15 conventional warheads, 23 tanks of nitric acid rocket propellant and 85 drums of unidentified chemicals had been found hidden under cement bags.

Scuds are a crude, Soviet-designed ballistic missile with a fearsome ability to penetrate defenses. They can carry nuclear, chemical or biological warheads.

The United States, which is threatening war to rid Iraq of alleged banned weapons, said the discovery was unlikely to affect its policy on communist North Korea — locked in a dispute with Washington, Japan and South Korea over its right to develop nuclear weapons.

US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage earlier said the interception of the So San was not a surprise. “Obviously, this was suspected by American authorities for some time,” he told reporters in Beijing.