Troops board 'Tampa' as it moves into Aussie waters

Troops board 'Tampa' as it moves into Aussie waters

CHRISTMAS ISLAND, Australia (Agencies): Elite Australian military personnel boarded a Norwegian cargo ship carrying 438 refugees on Wednesday after its captain defied orders banning it from entering Australian territorial waters, Prime Minister John Howard said.

The Special Air Service troops were ferried to the ship, the Tampa, on three boats, this island's harbor master, Don O'Donnell, said. The boats returned to Christmas Island after dropping off the Australian troops. No refugees were transferred back to the island, he said.

Howard said the soldiers had secured the ship. There were no reports of any violence.

Witnesses said the troops were armed with machine guns and automatic rifles, and some were wearing body armor.

On Monday, the Tampa rescued the refugees -- most of them Afghani -- when the ferry illegally carrying them from Indonesia to Australia without visas began sinking.

Squeezed onto the cargo ship under a harsh tropical sun off the coast of this remote Indian Ocean island for three days, many of the refugees have refused to eat and were threatening to jump overboard unless Australia granted them entry.

Earlier on Wednesday, a spokesman for the ship's owner, the Wallenius Wilhelmsen shipping line, said the Tampa's captain, Arne Rinnan, had issued a mayday distress call fearing for the health of some of the refugees. Rinnan said there were at least six very sick people aboard.

There also are dozens of children and a number of pregnant women among the refugees.

Howard said that despite warnings to the ship's captain and to the Norwegian foreign minister that Australia would board the vessel if it entered territorial waters, the ship approached Christmas Island on Wednesday.

"The government was left with no alternative but to instruct the chief of the Australian defense force to arrange for defense personnel to board and secure the vessel," Howard said.

In a statement to Parliament in Canberra, Howard said the ship's captain had decided to steer toward Christmas Island after refugees threatened to jump overboard if they did not receive medical attention.

Meanwhile, Australia's conservative government on Wednesday night tried to introduce new legislation that would retroactively allow it to force the Tampa to leave territorial waters.

The center-left opposition Labor Party, which has backed the government in its refusal to accept 438 mainly Afghan asylum seekers rescued last Sunday by the freighter Tampa from a sinking vessel, said it would not support the bill.

In another development, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said Wellington would probably not have turned away the Norwegian freighter stranded off Christmas Island if it were trying to enter New Zealand waters.

"It is likely that New Zealand would escort a ship carrying such people into its waters, detain them, and work as quickly as possible to identify which among the asylum seekers were genuine refugees and which were not," Clark said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the vessel's owners said on Wednesday the asylum seekers packed onto the Tampa are eating again after ending a two-day hunger strike.

"The men have started to eat and drink again," Hans Christian Bangsmoen, spokesman for Norwegian shipowners Wallenius Wilhelmsen, told Reuters in Oslo.

He said he did not know why the mostly Afghan asylum seekers had ended the hunger strike.

"It's good news because they will be in better shape," he said.

Bangsmoen also denied media reports that Wilhelmsen was considering reporting Australian authorities for piracy if they forced the vessel back into international waters.