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PHNOM PENH, Oct. 3 (Xinhua) -- A Democratic People's Republic ofKorea (DPRK)'s ship seized off Egypt with a huge cache of weaponshad illegally flown Cambodian flag, a Cambodian foreign ministryspokesman said in a statement late Monday.

Chum Sounry, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs andInternational Cooperation, said Cambodia had decided to terminatethe contract with the International Ship Registry of Cambodia(ISROC) as a sole and exclusive flag state administration inCambodian ship registration since Aug. 2015 and asked ISROC todiscontinue registering the Cambodian-flagged ships since then.

He added that Cambodia also informed the Secretary-General ofthe International Maritime Organization in Aug. 2016 that thecountry had decided to close down the ship registration since Aug.2015, and to facilitate the ship owners, whose ships still hadvalid registry certificates with Cambodian flag, Cambodia allowedtheir ships to be operated under Cambodian flag till thosecertificates were expired which was due at the end of Aug.2016.

"Any ship claimed to be under Cambodian flag after this due dateare considered illegal and subjected to applicable internationallaw and regulations," Chum Sounry said.

"Therefore, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and InternationalCooperation wishes to affirm that the flying of the Cambodian flagof convenience by any ship including the above-mentioned vessel isillegal," he said.

The spokesman's statement came after the Washington Postpublished on Monday an article entitled "A North Korean ship wasseized off Egypt with a huge cache of weapons destined for asurprising buyer".

In the article, it reported that the bulk freighter named JieShun was flying Cambodian colors but had sailed from DPRK...andthat the Egyptian customs swarmed the vessel and discovered,concealed under bins of iron ore, a cache of more than 30,000rocket-propelled grenades. Enditem