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Respekt in English20. 5. 20026 minut

Missiles for Saddam

According to U.S. secret services information, after the allied strike on Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein has started, secretly and in large numbers, buying in anti-aircraft missiles.

Astronaut

According to U.S. secret services information, after the allied strike on Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein has started, secretly and in large numbers, buying in anti-aircraft missiles. The suppliers of weapons protecting Iraq dictatorship against an anti-terrorist alliance attack have become companies mainly from Russia, Byelorussia, Bulgaria, the Ukraine, and the Czech Republic.

„Strela 2“

↓ INZERCE

„On February 23 of this year, we witnessed a delivery of missiles and guidance systems to Iraq. According to our estimates, it involved weapons worth of USD 800,000. The freight was unladed in Syrian harbor of Latakia and then transported to Iraq,“ three recent Iraq army deserters told the Guardian last month. Their credibility was pledged by general Nawaf al-Malki, an Iraq foreign opposition representative, who had left Iraq as early as in 1989. „We know that this involved the weapons originally exported from the Czech Republic,“ the deserters also said to the Guardian. Their testimony have caused an understandable sensation.

„Our officials went through several hundreds of weapons export licenses conferred in last two years. I am dead sure that we have not given any approval to missiles export during that time,“ said Anna Stárková, spokeswoman of Ministry of Industry.

It is not as easy as that. Iraq is a country to which applies the U.N. embargo, and it would be a suicide of democratic state's foreign policy to confer a license for weapons export to such a country. „Have we exported anything to Syria? I can't tell you that. You know well enough that this information is classified,“ Anna Stárková responds. According to sources close to present intelligence services, no license to export any weapons to Syria has been conferred in last five years. Nevertheless, the secret services are thoroughly examining this information, and admit that some Czech companies could have been concerned in illegal weapons supply to Baghdad.

In the Czech Republic, weapons trade license is held by one hundred and thirty-three companies. According to Anna Stárková, eighty companies actively participated in the weapons trade last year and almost one thousand of transactions were realized. What companies were concerned and what trades were realized, we shall never know. It is a classified information.

According to the intelligence services information, mainly hand anti-aircraft missiles „Strela 2“ were supplied to Iraq in this February. Czech army is also equipped with these rockets. Yet for the moment, not even secret services know if an export license for these missiles has been conferred in last eight years (when license law concerning „special materials“ trade is applicable). According to Iraqi emigrants, the mentioned supply was supposed to be exported from the Czech Republic as early as in 1995. The price of eight hundred thousand dollars equals to fifteen missiles „Strela 2“. „As for the date of export, I don't wonder at all. According to our information, thirty percent of the world weapons export is being re-exported. Often to unstable regions and by a very conspirative way. The final customer virtually cannot be traced out,“ a secret service officer claims.

Call the President!

Iraqi deserters testimony is but a piece in the mosaic of information concerning Saddam's armament against a possible attack. What the Iraqi said only confirms many other proofs of arms smuggling to Baghdad.

This March, undersecretary of the U.S. State Department Steven Pifer released an information provided by CIA. At the end of last year, a group of Iraqi officers underwent a training in Belorussia. It focused mainly on the anti-aircraft rocket system S-300 (with missiles allocated at mobile carriers) operating. Approximately in the same time, U.S. media released a tape containing phone calls between the Ukraine President Leonid Kučma and the State Weapons Sale Agency chief Valerij Malajev. The tape was recorded by a Kučma's personal guard member who afterwards emigrated to the United States. According to the tape, Ukraine and Byelorussia supplied Iraq with S-300 rocket systems worth one hundred million dollars. By the way, Malajev died in a car crash soon after Kučma's guard member escaped.

At the beginning of the year, Scott Ritter, the former U.S. Arms Commissioner in Iraq, said in an interview for the Times that during his mission in the nineties he had gathered enough evidence of Saddam Hussein regime armament through companies from the former Warsaw Pact countries. „The weapons were being supplied to Iraq through private cover companies from the East Europe and they got to Iraq mainly through Syria,“ he said.

The Czech Secret

The NATO security institutions representatives base their monitoring of Saddam's purchases on information like the tape of Leonid Kučma's phone call (Kučma denied the recording authenticity). The other source is a weapons export analysis and diplomatic relations. The Czech Republic provides enough indications to be considerably suspect of weapons supply to Iraq regime. Contrary to the majority of Western countries, weapons trade in the Czech Republic is being classified. „Due to the information classifying, not even the parliament is able to have control over weapons export and import. Yet I have to confess that we have not dealt with weapons export in the Committee agenda,“ a member of the Chamber of Deputies and the Defense and Security Committee Petr Koháček says.

The list of weapons traders is also classified. Among those that are known, we generally find companies whose owners are in one way or other connected with the former communist sole weapons exporter Omnipol (Richard Háva and Omnyx company, Pavel Musela and Pamco company, Jiří Tomeš and Thomas CZ company etc.). According to the released statistics, Omnipol had exported most to the Soviet Union and Arabian countries. Based on available media information, today's national export has a similar structure.

The most significant indication of present Czech interest in Iraq remains still bottled-up travel of Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Hynek Kmoníček, advisor to the prime minister Miroslav Šlouf, Czech-American drug smuggler Milan Jedlička and several domestic managers to Baghdad in January 2001. Up to this day, nobody trustfully explained what they had discussed in Iraq. „If I can disclaim that weapons were involved?“ asks surprised Government press agent Libor Rouček. „Don't bother me with such stupidities.“


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