STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Sweden has sent a formal request to China seeking cooperation to help clarify what happened when two undersea cables were damaged in the Baltic Sea, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said on Thursday.
The subsea cables, one linking Finland and Germany and the other connecting Sweden to Lithuania, were damaged on Nov. 17-18, prompting German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius to say he assumed it was sabotage.
Investigators have zeroed in on Chinese bulk carrier Yi Peng 3, which left the Russian port of Ust-Luga on Nov. 15, and a Reuters analysis of MarineTraffic data showed that the ship’s coordinates corresponded to the time and place of the breaches.
Kristersson on Nov. 26 demanded that the ship, which currently sits idle in international waters inside Denmark’s economic zone, return to Sweden to aid the investigation.
A formal request for cooperation was made to Beijing based on findings from the investigation, he said on Thursday.
“It expresses our determination to conduct a search of the vessel to find out what happened,” Kristersson said.
Western intelligence officials from multiple countries have said they are confident the Chinese ship caused the cuts to both cables. But they have expressed different views on whether these were accidents or could have been deliberate.
China’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday the communications channels with Sweden and other relevant parties were “unobstructed”, when asked about the Swedish request.
(Reporting by Anna Ringstrom and Stine Jacobsen, editing by Louise Rasmussen, Terje Solsvik, Elaine Hardcastle)
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