I guess it's an extension of this story that has been percolating around...
command-post.org
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Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction Are Being Hidden In Syria
Via IraqNet Information Network:
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A relative of Syrian President Bashar Assad is hiding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in three locations in Syria, according to intelligence sources cited by an exiled opposition party.
The weapons were smuggled in large wooden crates and barrels by Zu Alhema al-Shaleesh, known for moving arms into Iraq in violation of U.N. resolutions and for sending recruits to fight coalition forces, said the U.S.-based Reform Party of Syria.
The party, based in Potomac, Md., regards itself as a secular body comprised of Syrians who want to see the country embrace "real democratic and economic reforms."
One weapons-cache location identified by the sources is a mountain tunnel near the village of al-Baidah in northwest Syria, the report said. The tunnel is known to house a branch of the Assad regime's national security apparatus.
Two other arms supplies are reported to be in west-central Syria. One is hidden at a factory operated by the Syrian Air Force, near the village of Tal Snan, between the cities of Hama and Salmiyeh. The third location is tunnels beneath the small town of Shinshar, which belongs to the 661 battalion of the Syrian Air Force.
The nephew of Zu Alhema al-Shaleesh, Assef al-Shaleesh, runs Al Bashair Trading Co., a front for the Assad family involved prior to the war in oil smuggling from Iraq and arms smuggling into the country. Al-Bashair has offices in Damascus, Beirut and Baghdad.
In an exclusive interview yesterday with the London Telegraph, Assad came close to admitting his country possessed stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.
Assad told the London paper Syria rejects American and British demands for concessions on weapons of mass destruction, insisting Damascus is entitled to defend itself by acquiring its own chemical and biological deterrent.
He said Israel must agree to abandon its undeclared nuclear arsenal in order for Syria to consider any deal with the U.S.
Last week, the Los Angeles Times reported Al Bashair Trading Co. participated in the smuggling of millions of dollars worth of sophisticated arms and equipment to Saddam Hussein for three years prior to the Iraqi leader's overthrow.
Al Bashair executives met with North Korean firms before the war began, according to the Los Angeles daily. The paper's three-month investigation included the translation of 800 signed contracts found in the Al Bashair Trading Co. office shortly before U.S. troops entered Baghdad.
Just prior to the U.S.-led effort to oust Hussein, SES International Corp. signed at least 50 contracts to supply weapons and gear to Iraq, the Times said, including 1,000 heavy machine guns and up to 20 million rounds for assault rifles.
Not all the weapons were delivered, but some may still be in use by terrorists battling the U.S. occupation forces, the newspaper said.
At least one shipment of arms was completed with the help of the Syrian government in violation of a U.N. arms embargo.
SES International Corp. denied any wrongdoing, while Syria's foreign ministry refused to comment to the Times.
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This is a story that has been percolating for some time. See, for example, related stories which have appeared at the Lebanese Foundation for Peace website, the NTI website, the U.S. Department of State website, the International Herald Tribune website, and in many other diverse outlets, such as the DEBKA file website and this South African television news website - News24.
Hat-tip to Mark at The Command Post for the DEBKA files tie-in.
In an extensive article published in the Los Angeles Times on December 30, 2003, staff writers Bob Drogin and Jeffrey Fleishman detailed some of the complex weapons-shipping relationships between Iraq and Syria:
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DAMASCUS, Syria — A Syrian trading company with close ties to the ruling regime smuggled weapons and military hardware to Saddam Hussein between 2000 and 2003, helping Syria become the main channel for illicit arms transfers to Iraq despite a stringent U.N. embargo, documents recovered in Iraq show.
The private company, called SES International Corp., is headed by a cousin of Syria's autocratic leader, Bashar Assad, and is controlled by other members of Assad's Baath Party and Alawite clan. Syria's government assisted SES in importing at least one shipment destined for Iraq's military, the Iraqi documents indicate, and Western intelligence reports allege that senior Syrian officials were involved in other illicit transfers.
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The Iraqi weapons files provide the first public evidence of Syria's extensive arms trade with Hussein's regime.
Most of Iraq's known arms smuggling schemes in the 1990s went through Jordan. Many involved "one man, one fax" offices set up by Iraqi agents or local businessmen for a specific deal. By 1998, U.N. inspectors had identified 146 Jordanian companies operating as fronts for Iraq.
Heavy pressure from Washington and other capitals finally forced Jordan's government to crack down.
Neighboring Syria, in contrast, had fought with the U.S.-led coalition against Iraq in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and had no known role supporting Iraq in the 1990s. Neither SES nor any other Syrian company is listed in confidential U.N. records that identify more than 350 companies from 43 nations that U.N. inspectors suspect helped supply prohibited unconventional weapons materiel to Iraq prior to 1998.
But the crippling of Iraq's smuggling rings in Jordan coincided with a dramatic change in Syria. The country's strongman, Hafez Assad, had been a bitter rival of Hussein for most of his three-decade reign. But the Damascus dictator died in June 2000 and his son, Bashar Assad, assumed power. Syria's long-frozen relations with Iraq soon began to thaw.
In November 2000, a newly repaired pipeline from Basra in southern Iraq began carrying 150,000 to 200,000 barrels a day of discounted oil to Syria. Another pipeline to Syria from northern Iraq opened in 2002 to carry another 60,000 barrels a day.
The flow was outside the U.N.-run "oil for food" program, which allowed Iraq to export oil to buy food, medicine and humanitarian items. Experts say Syria kept the contraband Iraqi oil for domestic use, sold its own oil at higher prices on world markets and pocketed profits of up to $1 billion a year.
In return, diplomats and intelligence experts say, Baghdad got easy access to weapons and so many smuggled goods that it opened a trade office in Tartus, Syria's chief port. Baghdad also got access to the outside world: Iraqi officials, often holding counterfeit passports, increasingly used the airport in Damascus to fly abroad.
"Syria became the most important ally for Iraq in the region, and helped it come out of its global isolation," said a Washington-based diplomat. "Damascus became the gateway for Iraq."
Experts say money may have mattered more than politics in the new alliance.
"It was purely a matter of opportunity" for Syria, said an intelligence official in the region. "I don't think empathy for Iraq came into it. It was like, 'This is going to make me lots of money and I don't mind if it hurts the Americans a little bit either.' "
Among those who prospered was SES International Corp., a conglomerate of nine aviation, construction, oil, car and other divisions based in an industrial area on the northeast outskirts of Damascus.
SES was founded in 1980. According to company documents, it has about $80 million in annual revenue and 5,000 employees. It is run by a small group of businessmen and other powerful figures with family or clan ties to the Assad regime.
Prominent among them is the president's cousin Asef Isa Shaleesh, the general manager of SES. He is the son of the late dictator's half sister. Another relative, Maj. Gen. Dhu Himma Shaleesh, heads the elite security corps that protects the president. He recently told Western diplomats that he had sold his stake in SES, but they were unable to confirm his claim.
Records reviewed by The Times show Asef Isa Shaleesh, the SES manager, made at least four trips to the Al Bashair offices in Baghdad between September 2001 and August 2002 to sign or update more than 50 SES contracts to supply Iraq's military.
Contract #23/A/2001, for example, was for SES delivery to Iraq of Russian-designed heavy machine guns.
"The Iraqis have confirmed their reception of 1,000 pieces, according to the contract," meeting notes from Nov. 11, 2001 read. "The Iraqi side is in the process of paying the Syrians for a second delivery of 500 pieces of Machines Gun BKC."
Syria's Foreign Ministry helped SES at least once, according to minutes of meetings between Asef Isa Shaleesh and Munir, the Al Bashair director, on April 7-8, 2002.
Four precision metal lathes from HMT Machines International Ltd. in Bangalore, India, had "arrived in Baghdad," the notes said, but customs officials in Malta had seized others destined for Iraq. Documents show that Syria was listed as the final destination, and do not indicate that HMT knew the lathes were headed for Iraq's military. It's unclear what Syria's government knew.
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Reached by telephone, Asef Isa Shaleesh, the general manager of SES, initially invited a Times reporter visiting Damascus to his office for an interview the next day. But an aide said the next day that Shaleesh "had unexpectedly gone to Romania" and later went to Russia. He has not replied since to numerous telephone calls, e-mails and faxes.
Western intelligence had traced some of the SES deals by mid-2002, two years after they began, With reports indicating illicit transfers into Iraq, the U.S. Embassy complained to the government in Damascus that summer. Assad replied that Syria would not violate U.N. sanctions.
"The president said, 'If you know of any cases, tell us,' " a Western official recalled. When evidence was provided, he added, "the Syrians would allege that that's been stopped."
No evidence has surfaced to show that Assad approved the SES deals with Iraq. But "sanctions-busting at this level would have been hard to keep from the president," a Western intelligence official said. An official from another government agreed. "We think it very unlikely that Bashar was not aware of this," he said.
He noted that two North Koreans flew to SES headquarters in Damascus in February 2003, a month before the war, to meet Munir, the director of Al Bashair.
"A North Korean is not a tourist," the official said. "Either Syria gave direct approval. Or it turned a blind eye."
IAEA inspectors reconstructed a report of the meeting from an erased computer hard drive that they had downloaded at Al Bashair in March. The sit-down at SES apparently focused on Pyongyang's inability to deliver $10 million of sophisticated ballistic missile technology — and its flat refusal to return the $10 million.
"The North Koreans said, 'It's too hot to refund your money,' " an official familiar with the report said.
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Western intelligence reports allege that several Syrian officials or their adult children were involved in shipments of tank engines, treads for armored personnel carriers, fuel pumps for missiles and other military equipment to Iraq.
One Syrian named in an intelligence report as a "key player" is Firas Tlass, head of MAS Economic Group, a business conglomerate based in Damascus. In an interview, Tlass said his companies had shipped textiles, computers and steel bars to Iraq since the late 1990s. But he said Israeli intelligence had spread false reports that he also sold weapons.
"I'm the son of the Syrian defense minister and we're Israel's enemy and they want to discredit the Syrian government and my father," Tlass said. "The only offer my company ever made to the Iraqi military was camouflage field jackets and they turned us down."
Syria's arms trade hit the headlines in March this year when Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld publicly accused Damascus of smuggling night-vision goggles and other military supplies to Iraq. He said Washington viewed "such trafficking as hostile acts and would hold the Syrian government accountable."
Syria's foreign minister called the charge "unfounded" and "an attempt to cover up what his forces have been committing against civilians in Iraq."
Damascus has sought to repair relations. Washington has praised Syria's assistance in rounding up suspected members of Al Qaeda since the Sept. 11 attacks. But President Bush signed a bill Dec. 12 barring export of military and dual-use items — equipment that could have civilian and military uses — to Syria until the White House certifies that Damascus has withdrawn troops from Lebanon, has cut support for Hamas and other terrorist groups, has stopped proscribed missile and chemical and biological weapons programs, and has acted to prevent militants from entering Iraq to attack coalition forces.
In contrast, the companies that knew the weapons and other sensitive supplies they sold to SES actually were destined for Iraq — a clear violation of U.N. sanctions — have faced little pressure. South Korea's Armitel Co. Ltd. is an example.
A 1998 spinoff from giant Samsung Electronics, Armitel develops and manufactures digital microwave systems for wireless communications. It is based in a high-tech industrial complex south of Seoul.
Armitel had signed contracts in 2001 and 2002 with SES totaling $23,431,487, the Iraqi files said.
On April 7, 2002, for example, Armitel's chairman inked a $1,859,862.18 contract with SES for "optical transmission, channel bank and auxiliary items."
But records labeled "secret" in the Al Bashair files show the Armitel equipment was "connected with the supply of air defense" and that the real buyer was the Salahaddin Co., based in northern Iraq, which was trying to develop a radar system to detect U.S. stealth bombers.
In an interview, Lee Dae Young, the 50-year-old chairman of Armitel, said he knew his equipment was headed to Iraq despite U.N. sanctions. But he said he thought he was helping Baghdad upgrade telephone and Internet service.
"We sold Iraq an optical cable system," Lee said. "Actually, now that this is over, I can tell you. We sold it to Syrians and they took it to Iraq."
Armitel had sent $8 million worth of equipment to Syria when U.S. intelligence got wind of the shipments in mid-2002. After the U.S. Embassy in Seoul complained, South Korea's Ministry of Commerce ordered Armitel to stop further shipments. An investigation was begun but Armitel was not charged. The company recently submitted proposals to the U.S.-controlled Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad for contracts to build a telecommunications network from Baghdad to Basra.
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