The captain of the Danish freighter Inge Toft, which has been impounded at the Port Said entrance to the Suez-Canal since May 21, has been ordered by his Danish employers to unload the Israel-originated cargo in his hold, according to a Cairo radio announcement monitored here today.
Refusing comment on the report, Israeli officials here said only that the “ship’s owners have the right to decide what to do.” The Inge Toft skipper has persistently refused to unload the cargo, which had originated in Haifa and was consigned to purchasers in the Far East, because the Egyptian authorities had announced they would confiscate the cargo as soon as it was unloaded.
The Cairo report was no surprise to Foreign Ministry officials who have known for ten days that United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold failed to convince the United Arab Republic authorities, during his visit to Cairo last month, that they should release both the Inge Toft and the Greek ship Astypalea. The latter was impounded with another Israel-originated cargo on December 17.
It is understood here that keeping the Inge Toft at a dock at Port Said since May has cost a total of about $250,000.
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