[Rhodes22-list] For the Liberals

[Steve]

This is for the liberals.  Read the below, a little
education on a Friday - free from your conservative
friend:-) Stan, old buddy, this is for you too:-)
Steve



By Craig Whitlock and Glenn Frankel, Washington Post
Foreign Service 

BERLIN, Oct. 7 -- As part of its stealth effort to
evade U.N. sanctions and rebuild its military, the
Iraqi government under President Saddam Hussein (news
- web sites) found that it had no shortage of people
around the world who were willing to help. Among them:
a French arms dealer known only as "Mr. Claude," who
made a surreptitious visit to Iraq (news - web sites)
four years ago to provide technical expertise and
training.


Mr. Claude worked for Lura, a French company that sold
tank carriers to Iraq, according to documents
recovered by the top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq.
The mysterious Frenchman may have also helped the
Iraqis attempt to acquire military-related radar and
microwave technology, despite a U.N. ban on such trade
with Iraq since the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War
(news - web sites).


Other French military contractors came to Baghdad with
offers to supply the Iraqi government with
helicopters, spare parts for fighter aircraft and air
defense systems after 1998, when U.N. weapons
inspectors withdrew under pressure, according to a
report issued this week by Charles A. Duelfer, the
chief U.S. weapons inspector. The report cites
evidence that contacts between the French suppliers
and Hussein's government continued until last year,
less than one month before the U.S.-led invasion of
Iraq.


While not denying that the transfers took place, a
spokesman for the French Foreign Ministry, Herve
Ladsous, said the accusations "were not verified
either with the people themselves or with the
authorities of the countries concerned," according to
the Associated Press.


The French were hardly alone in helping Hussein to
reinvigorate his military forces during the 12 years
that Iraq was under strict U.N. sanctions. Arm dealers
and military suppliers from the former Eastern Bloc --
Russia, Poland, Romania, Belarus and Ukraine --
provided critical assistance to Iraq as it tried to
build a long-range missile program and other systems
that weapons inspectors feared could have been used
someday to launch chemical, biological or even nuclear
attacks.


"It was well known within the U.S. government that
individuals and companies were selling Iraq various
kinds of prohibited items," said Gary Samore, a
nonproliferation specialist in the Clinton
administration who now works as an analyst for the
London-based International Institute for Strategic
Studies. 


While the United States sought to shut down suppliers
through diplomatic and other means, Samore said, it
was common knowledge that Iraq was able to bypass
sanctions by buying in small quantities and paying
high prices, using a network of front companies in
Jordan, Syria and other countries in the Middle East.


"The world is awash in conventional arms, and every
time there's been an arms embargo on a country they've
been able to circumvent it," he said. "It's much more
difficult to buy more exotic technologies like nuclear
weapons, but there are so many private dealers and
corrupt state entities, especially in the former
Soviet Union. The best you can do is slow down sales,
obstruct them or make it more expensive."


Numerous other nations bought and sold on the Iraqi
military shopping network, including such
dictatorships as North Korea (news - web sites) and
the former Yugoslavia before the downfall of President
Slobodan Milosevic (news - web sites). While some of
the countries were politically friendly with or
sympathetic to Iraq, the biggest motivation was
usually money, according to Duelfer's report to the
CIA (news - web sites). 


"As long as the regime had enough cash to pay for
these items, it really wouldn't have been too much of
a problem to obtain these things and smuggle them in,"
said Jeremy Binnie, Middle East editor for Jane's
Sentinel Security Assessments, a London-based
magazine. "It just takes people with enough money and
the ability to find the right contacts to get their
hands on this stuff."


The Iraqi pipeline extended to four countries --
Bulgaria, Poland, Romania and Ukraine -- that later
sent troops to Iraq to join the U.S.-led military
coalition.


In Poland, Iraqi intelligence officers helped set up a
front company called Ewex, which obtained engines and
guidance components for surface-to-air missiles from
Polish scrap dealers and middlemen who scoured
military surplus stockpiles for the parts, the report
said.


U.S. inspectors estimated that Iraq bought about 280
engines from Poland from 2001 to 2003 with the intent
of using them to equip a new missile that violated
U.N. range limits. The engines had been removed from
Polish missiles decommissioned after the Cold War.


Polish authorities arrested some Ewex executives in
2003 on charges of making illegal arms deliveries to
Iraq. Purchasing documents confiscated later showed
that many of the engines were funneled through Syria.


In Bulgaria, a firm called the JEFF Co. exported more
than $7 million worth of warheads, missiles and
launcher units to Baghdad in 2002 in violation of U.N.
sanctions, the report found. Other Bulgarian traders
sold chemicals and machine tools to Iraq that could be
used for civilian purposes but were really intended
for missile components and other military purposes.


In Romania, Iraqi intelligence agents used diplomatic
pouches to send photos of tanks and other military
equipment available for sale in that nation back to
Baghdad. Although weapons inspectors said it was
unclear how much equipment was purchased by the Iraqi
government, they did uncover documents after the war
showing that a Romanian firm, Uzinexport SA, signed a
contract in October 2001 to sell magnets to Iraq that
"could have been suitable" for a uranium enrichment
program.


In most cases, U.S. weapons inspectors found no clear
evidence that officials in those countries were
involved in the arms deals. One exception was Ukraine,
where leaders gave their blessing to military sales to
Iraq.

   



The Duelfer report calls Ukraine "one of the countries
involved in illicit military-related procurement with
Iraq" after the 1991 Gulf War, noting that President
Leonid Kuchma personally approved the sale of a $100
million antiaircraft radar system to Iraq via a
Jordanian intermediary in 2000. Ukrainian officials
have since said the sale was never completed, and
weapons inspectors said they had not found any
evidence that the radar system was shipped to Iraq.

In 2001, Iraqi intelligence agents also bought five
motors from a Ukrainian company as part of a project
to develop unmanned spy planes. The motors were
shipped to Iraq from Ukraine in diplomatic pouches to
avoid the attention of international inspectors, the
report said.

A Ukrainian electronics professor whose private firm
transferred missile engines and motors to Iraqi
companies was rewarded with vouchers and credits for
more than 7.5 million barrels of Iraqi oil from 1998
to 2000, the report found. The professor, identified
as Yuri Orshansky, made about $1.85 million in profits
under the U.N. oil-for-food program, which was
designed to generate revenue for the Iraqi people
under economic sanctions.

Some of the clearest evidence of government
corruption, according to the report, involved Russia,
a country that has vast storehouses of military
technology. 

Although the Russian government has denied past
accusations that it played a role in supplying arms
and military equipment to Hussein's government, U.S.
weapons inspectors reported finding "a significant
amount of captured documentation showing contracts
between Iraq and Russian companies."

In one case, a Russian general, Anatoly Makros, formed
a joint company with Iraqi partners in 1998 "just to
handle the large volume of Russian business,"
according to the report, which also cited a former
Iraqi diplomat as saying that Russian customs
officials ignored the illegal commerce in exchange for
bribes.

Trade with Russia was so brisk that Iraqi Embassy
officials smuggled military supplies on weekly charter
flights from Moscow to Baghdad, according to the
former Iraqi diplomat, who was not named in the
report. The equipment included radar jammers,
night-vision goggles and small missile components. 

One Russian company signed contracts valued at about
$20 million to provide material for Iraq's missile
systems. Another Russian firm, Uliss, negotiated a
deal to support a tank project dubbed "Saddam the
Lion," according to the report.

Frankel reported from London.







		
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Y! Messenger - Communicate in real time. Download now. 
http://messenger.yahoo.com