MOSCOW, (Reuters) – The mystery surrounding a missing  merchant ship deepened yesterday with the vessel’s operator  suggesting piracy and maritime experts suspecting foul play or  even a secret cargo.

The Kremlin ordered Russian warships to join the hunt for  the 4,000-tonne, 98-metre bulk carrier Arctic Sea, whose fate  has baffled maritime authorities across Europe and North Africa.

The Maltese-registered vessel, carrying a $1.3-million cargo  of timber, was supposed to have docked on Aug. 4 in the Algerian  port of Bejaia. It never arrived and is thought to have last  made contact from the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of France.

Mikhail Boytenko, editor of Russia’s respected Sovfracht  maritime journal, said that the ship may have been carrying a  secret cargo unknown to the vessel’s owners or operators.

“I think there was probably some sort of secret cargo on  this vessel, not criminal but secret, and a third party of some  sort did not want the cargo to get to another party so this  highly sophisticated operation was cooked up,” he told Reuters.

“I don’t think that it was pirates who took this vessel but  it really smells of some sort of state involvement. This is real  cloak and dagger stuff, like a (John) le Carre novel.”

A wave of piracy has hit shipping off Somalia, and an  international naval force patrols its coast in an effort to  protect merchant vessels. But a hijacking in European waters  would be almost unprecedented in modern times.

“There has not been a so called incident of this kind around  in Europe for a very long time,” said Jim Davis, chairman of  London-based industry group the Inter-national Maritime  Industries Forum.

“It is a unique incident so far in European waters.”
Piracy is rare in European waters with only a couple of  recent incidents involving private yachts in the Mediter-