26 October 2004	Tuesday	11 Ramazan 1425

TOKYO, Oct 25: Asia's first naval exercise aimed at blocking the shipment of weapons of mass destruction began on Monday in Japan despite opposition from alleged proliferator North Korea to the US-led drill.

The drill includes the navies of the United States, France, Australia and host Japan as well as observers from 18 nations including Britain, Canada and Russia.

North Korea's neighbours China and South Korea were invited to take part but declined amid fierce opposition to the exercise from the Stalinist North, which has exported missiles and says it is developing nuclear weapons.

The drill began with a meeting in Tokyo to review the simulated naval exercises to be conducted Tuesday off Yokohama, 30 kilometres south of Tokyo.

Known as the Proliferation Security Initiative, the drill was launched by US President George W. Bush in May 2003 in a bid to improve global efforts to intercept weapons shipments by land, sea or air by rogue states and terrorist groups.

The exercise, widely seen as targeting Iran and North Korea, has been held 10 times before but this is its first time in Asia. Pyongyang has condemned Japan for hosting the drill and accused the United States of aggression.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell, visiting Tokyo on Sunday, said the North should only be concerned about the drill if it is smuggling weapons.

"This is not hostile to any nation that is acting in an appropriate manner," Powell said.

"The only thing North Korea should be concerned about is whether or not they are going to be caught in the act of participating in this kind of illicit traffic," he said.

John Bolton, the hawkish US undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, will attend the drill in Sagami Bay on Tuesday, a USA embassy spokesman said.

In an interview with a US arms control magazine, Bolton has said there have been "some" interdictions of suspicious material since the launch of the Proliferation Security Initiative.

Japan will send some 580 military and coast guard personnel to the exercise along with five coast guard vessels and a destroyer. The United States, France and Australia will each send some 100 personnel and a military vessel.

In one scenario, a ship with a US flag will pretend to move weapons onto a vessel with a Japanese flag. The two ships flee when Japanese coast guards approach them.

Under the scenario the coast guards eventually catch up with the Japanese ship, search it and seize the material. The other suspected ship flying the US flag is stopped and inspected by the American, Australian and French vessels.

In the exercise, authorities later analyze the material and determine that it is Sarin, the nerve gas used by Japan's Aum Supreme Truth cult in a 1995 attack on the Tokyo subway which killed 12 and injured more than 5,000.-AFP