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.