TOKYO: A stricken Iranian oil tanker drifted into Japan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) on Wednesday afternoon, a spokesman for Japan’s Coast Guard said on Friday, as strong winds pushed the burning ship away from the Chinese coast.
The ship, which has been ablaze for almost a week since it collided with another vessel on Saturday night in the East China Sea, was about 300 kilometers northwest of Sokkozaki on the island of Amami Oshima as of Thursday afternoon, a spokesman from the Coast Guard’s 10th region based in Kagoshima said.
Amami Oshima is one of the northern islands in the Ryukyu islands chain that includes Okinawa.
The tanker Sanchi, owned by Iran’s top oil shipping operator National Iranian Tanker, was carrying almost 1 million barrels of condensate, an ultra-light, highly flammable crude oil, to South Korea.
It collided with the freighter CF Crystal that was carrying grain from the United States about 184km off China’s coast near Shanghai.
The spokesman said that Chinese authorities turned down an offer from the Japanese Coast Guard to help, saying it would ask for help when needed.
He said it was not clear if the tanker would drift into Japan’s territorial waters, which are about 280km away.
The Coast Guard has sent patrol boats and aircraft to get the latest information about the tanker and is monitoring the situation, he said.
The Sanchi had a crew of 32 sailors at the time of the collision. The body of a mariner suspected to be from the ship was recovered on Monday and sent to Shanghai for identification. The rest of the crew, which included 30 Iranians and two Bangladeshis, remains missing.
Stricken Iranian oil tanker drifts into Japan’s economic zone
Stricken Iranian oil tanker drifts into Japan’s economic zone
Ukraine-Russia peace talks resume in Geneva with pressure on Kyiv
- Ukraine-Russia peace talks resume in Geneva with pressure on Kyiv
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky criticizes US pressure for Ukraine concessions
GENEVA: Negotiators from Ukraine and Russia began a second day of talks in Geneva on Wednesday, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the United States was putting undue pressure on him to bring an end to the four-year-old war in his country.
The US-mediated peace talks in Switzerland have been taking place as US President Donald Trump has twice in recent days suggested it was up to Ukraine and Zelensky to take steps to ensure the talks were successful.
In an interview with US website Axios published on Tuesday, Zelensky was quoted as saying that it was “not fair” Trump kept publicly calling on Ukraine, not Russia, to make concessions in negotiating terms for a peace plan.
Zelensky also said any plan requiring Ukraine to give up territory that Russia had not captured in the eastern Donbas region would be rejected by Ukrainians if put to a referendum.
“I hope it is just his tactics and not the decision,” Axios quoted Zelensky as saying in the interview.
Trump told reporters on Monday that “Ukraine better come to the table fast. That’s all I’m telling you.”
Talks come days before fourth anniversary of invasion
The Geneva talks resumed on Wednesday morning.
“The consultations are taking place in groups by areas within the political and military groups. We are working on clarifying the parameters and mechanics of the decisions that were discussed yesterday,” Ukraine’s lead negotiator and head of the National Security and Defense Council Rustem Umerov said on social media.
The talks come just days before the fourth anniversary of Russia’s 2022 invasion of its much smaller neighbor. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, millions have fled their homes, and many Ukrainian cities, towns and villages have been devastated by the conflict.
Russia denies deliberately targeting civilians.
Russian source called talks ‘very tense’
Umerov said Tuesday’s talks had focused on “practical issues and the mechanics of possible decisions,” without providing details. Russian officials made no comments on the talks.
However, Russian news agencies quoted a source as saying that the Tuesday talks were “very tense” and lasted six hours in different bilateral and trilateral formats.
Ukrainian government bonds fell as much as 1.9 cents on the dollar in morning trade in Europe on reports of stalled progress at the talks.
Before the talks began, Umerov had played down hopes for a significant step forward in Geneva, saying the Ukrainian delegation was working “without excessive expectations.”
The Geneva meeting follows two rounds of US-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi that concluded without a major breakthrough as the two sides remained far apart on key issues such as the control of territory in eastern Ukraine.
Russia occupies about 20 percent of Ukraine’s national territory, including Crimea and parts of the eastern Donbas region seized before the 2022 full-scale invasion. Its recent airstrikes on energy infrastructure have left hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians without heating and power during a harsh winter.
Zelensky thanked Trump for his peacemaking efforts and told Axios that his conversations with the top US negotiators, envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, did not involve the same kind of pressure.
Witkoff early on Wednesday said Trump’s efforts to get Russia and Ukraine talking were yielding fruit.
“President Trump’s success in bringing both sides of this war together has brought about meaningful progress, and we are proud to work under his leadership to stop the killing in this terrible conflict,” he said on X. “Both parties agreed to update their respective leaders and continue working toward a deal.”
