Military Exercise Focused on Finding WMD

A 13-country military exercise Wednesday in the South China Sea centered around intercepting a ship that may have carried weapons of mass destruction.

The exercise is part of the Proliferation Security Initiative organized by the United States and hosted by Singapore, the Kyodo News Agency of Japan reports.

The goal of the exercise is to better train countries to find and capture possible weapons.

About 2,000 troops from the United States, Japan, Singapore, Britain, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia and Italy took part in the drills.

They boarded seven ships that approached a suspect vessel and ordered it to head towards a port, which it refused.

Troops boarded the vessel by boat and helicopter, searched it and seized a fake shipment of chemicals.