MESSAGE
| DATE | 2004-10-09 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir Secretary NYLXS
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] More and Iraq Sactions
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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 -- __________________________
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