MESSAGE
| DATE | 2004-10-09 |
| FROM | Mike Richardson - NYLXS PRESIDENT
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [hangout] More and Iraq Sactions
|
Almost everyone knew the sanctions were not working long before bush
bambozeled his way into the White House.
On Sat, 9 Oct 2004, Ruben Safir Secretary NYLXS wrote:
>
> October 8, 2004
> THE SANCTIONS
> U.S. Report Says Hussein Bought Arms With Ease
> By ERIC LIPTON and SCOTT SHANE
>
> ASHINGTON, Oct. 7 - Enriched with billions of dollars raised by
> exploiting the United Nations' oil-for-food program, Saddam Hussein
> spent heavily on arms imports starting in 1999, finding six governments
> and private companies from a dozen other nations that were willing to
> ignore sanctions prohibiting arms sales, the report by the top American
> arms inspector for Iraq has found.
>
> The purchases, which included components of long-range missiles, spare
> parts for tanks and night-vision equipment, were not enough to allow
> Iraq to significantly rebuild its conventional military or create a
> viable chemical, biological or nuclear weapons program, according to
> the report by the inspector, Charles A. Duelfer, which was released
> Wednesday.
>
> But the relative ease with which Mr. Hussein was able to buy weapons -
> working directly with governments in Syria, Belarus, Yemen, North
> Korea, the former Yugoslavia and possibly Russia, as well as with
> private companies in Europe, Asia and the Middle East - is documented
> in extraordinary detail, including repeated visits by government
> officials and arms merchants to Iraq and complicated schemes to
> disguise illegal shipments to Iraq.
>
> "Prohibited goods and weapons were being shipped into Iraq with
> virtually no problem," the report says. "Indeed, Iraq was designing
> missile systems with the assumption that sanctioned material would be
> readily available."
>
> The report suggests that Mr. Hussein was justified when, speaking at a
> gathering of leaders of the Iraqi armed forces in January 2000, he
> boasted that despite efforts by the United States and the United
> Nations to isolate Iraq, he would still be able to buy just about
> whatever he wanted. "We have said with certainty that the embargo will
> not be lifted by a Security Council resolution, but will corrode by
> itself," Mr. Hussein said in the speech, a remark that is quoted on the
> cover of the chapter in Mr. Duelfer's report that details the
> ineffectiveness of the embargo.
>
> The report is replete with names, dates and documents detailing
> negotiations over arms purchases and technical advice, which continued
> until just days before the United States-led invasion in March 2003. An
> Iraqi memo from 2000 tells military officials in Baghdad that the
> deputy general manager of the French company Sofema, a
> military-component marketer, will be bringing a company catalog so that
> they can "discuss your needs with him."
>
> President Bush, speaking to reporters on the South Lawn of the White
> House on Thursday, said the report demonstrated that Iraq was
> determined to illegally rebuild its military. "Saddam was
> systematically gaming the system, using the United Nations oil-for-food
> program to try to influence countries and companies in an effort to
> undermine sanctions," he said.
>
> While the scope of the inquiry did not extend beyond Iraq, the report
> raises fundamental questions about the effectiveness of sanctions, a
> tool the United States has frequently used as a foreign policy tool
> short of military action. Offered lucrative contracts by Mr. Hussein,
> both arms suppliers and government officials seem not to have hesitated
> to ignore United Nations trade restrictions, going so far as to
> disguise tank engines as agricultural parts.
>
> What actions, if any, the United States will take toward sanctions
> violators is unclear, as are the implications for current United States
> standoffs with nations like Iran and North Korea over nuclear weapons
> programs. But sanctions remain one of the few options in many complex
> international disputes.
>
> "They're often better than nothing," said Joshua Muravchik, a resident
> scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who is writing a book on
> the United Nations.
>
> The illicit trade accelerated as the years passed and the threats of
> possible military action by the United States increased, with the
> number of deals among the top suppliers climbing from about 5
> transactions in 1998 to more than 15 in 2000 and more than 35 in 2002,
> the report says.
>
> North Korea and Belarus made perhaps the most aggressive effort to sell
> advanced military equipment to Iraq, the report says, delivering items
> that included radar technology that was ultimately used against
> American attack planes.
>
> President Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus was involved in the deals,
> the report says, noting that he "was anxious that illicit trade should
> continue on a regular basis and requested that a firm called Belarus
> Afta be established in Baghdad as a clearinghouse for illicit military
> trade."
>
> A spokesman from the Belarus Embassy in Washington said that any items
> sold to Iraq complied with United Nations' rules. "We have always
> maintained and we continue to maintain that all these accusations are
> preposterous," said the spokesman, Valentin Rybakov.
>
> Among European allies, France's military industry had extensive
> contacts with Iraqi officials. The report describes, for example,
> repeated trips by an executive from the French company Lura, which sold
> Iraq a tank carrier.
>
> Other private companies from Jordan, China, India, South Korea,
> Bulgaria, Ukraine, Cyprus, Egypt, Lebanon, Georgia, Poland, Romania,
> Taiwan, Italy and Turkey offered or sold items that supported Iraq's
> conventional arms programs or could have been used by Mr. Hussein to
> make weapons of mass destruction, the report says.
>
> No American individuals or companies were named in the report as
> supplying Iraq with military goods or other prohibited items. But a
> number of United States companies and at least two American citizens
> are listed as having received oil vouchers that permitted them to
> profit from the oil-for-food program.
>
> Unlike hundreds of voucher recipients from other countries, the
> American recipients are not named in the report but only listed as
> "United States company" or "United States person," an omission that a
> government official said was required by American privacy laws.
>
> In January, an Iraqi newspaper, Al Mada, ran a list of 270 recipients
> of oil vouchers that appears to closely parallel the list in the
> Duelfer report. That list included two Americans, Shaker al-Khafaji and
> Samir Vincent, neither of whom could be reached for comment on Thursday.
>
> Iraq went to great lengths to build a missile system with a range
> longer than the limits imposed by the United Nations, a major
> technological challenge that required the import of an array of banned
> parts. Companies from China and Russia sold, or negotiated to sell,
> missile guidance systems, the report says. A Polish company supplied a
> propulsion system. An Indian company built and sold Iraq a missile-fuel
> processing plant.
>
> In some cases, governments moved to stop the illicit trade. In 2002,
> for example, Indian authorities arrested executives at NEC Engineering,
> which the report says imported solid propellant ingredients for Iraqi
> surface-to-surface missiles.
>
> The report describes in detail the extraordinary measures taken to move
> illicit goods into Iraq and to cover the tracks of violators. Iraqi
> diplomats smuggled radar-jamming devices in diplomatic pouches. An
> airline created by Iraq and Belarus used four Boeing 747's to move
> goods from Minsk, the Belarussian capital, to Baghdad "under cover of
> humanitarian aid missions."
>
> "During the sanction years, traders used a pool of private dhows,
> barges, and tankers to smuggle oil out and commodities into and out of
> Iraq's southern ports with relative ease," the report says.
>
> The report also cites evidence that the Jordanian government closely
> monitored illegal shipments and canceled an inspection arrangement with
> Lloyd's Register Group of London, an independent monitor of trade, to
> make smuggling easier.
>
> Copyright 2004 -- __________________________
> Brooklyn Linux Solutions
>
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>
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____________________________
NYLXS: New Yorker Free Software Users Scene
Fair Use -
because it's either fair use or useless....
NYLXS is a trademark of NYLXS, Inc
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