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Greenpeace Ship Makes Port

A Greenpeace ship was towed into the northern port of Murmansk early Sunday morning after being seized by Russian coast guards.


The Greenpeace vessel, the Solo, was monitoring radiation in the Arctic.


The Solo was expected to arrive on Friday, but due to snow storms and high waves, the vessel was delayed by two days.


Roles were reversed on Thursday, when the Greenpeace vessel ended up tugging the tugboat Ladogo, which suffered an engine failure. A second boat was eventually sent out to assist.


Russian border guards only let a Russian television team on board the Solo and prevented other journalists from boarding the vessel. Swedish, Dutch and U. S. diplomats, sent from St. Petersburg to Murmansk were also denied access to the boat.


Late Sunday afternoon it was still unclear whether or not the Solo crew will face arrest.


Captain Albert Kuijken and his crew were shot at and detained last week, for trespassing in Russian territorial waters.


The environmental organization says the ship was in international waters, east of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago, when it was intercepted last Monday.


The Solo was on a mission to inspect radiation leaks in the Barents Sea.


According to Greenpeace representatives, the Soviet authorities are responsible for dumping 15 nuclear reactors and 17, 000 containers of nuclear waste off the coast of the Novaya Zemlya.

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