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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PartyTime who wrote (52544)	10/26/2000 10:12:14 AM
From: jlallen	Respond to of 769670

Bad news for WhopperAl: Experts Aghast at Gore's Russia Deal NewsMax.com October 26, 2000 Former American defense, national-security and diplomatic officials have combined to express alarm over Al Gore's secret agreement for Russia to slip arms to Iran. It is unprecedented that a high-level bipartisan critique of a sitting vice president, involving such a delicate national-security development, would be made publicly. According to the Washington Times, which uncovered the furtive back-channel 1995 deal Gore made with his close friend, Viktor Chernomyrdin, then the Russian prime minister: A bipartisan group of 11 leading national security officials and former secretaries of defense and state has issued a scathing report denouncing the agreement Gore made in secret with Chernomyrdin to keep Russia's arming of Iran from being revealed to Congress and the American public. In their joint statement, issued through the office of former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, the American experts said: "The military balance in regions of vital interest to America and her allies – including the Persian Gulf, which is a critical source of the world's energy supplies – is the essential underpinning for a strong foreign policy. "That is why we are deeply disturbed by the agreement made between Vice President Gore and then-Russian Premier Chernomyrdin in which America acquiesced in the sale by Russia to Iran of highly threatening military equipment such as modern submarines, fighter planes and wake-homing torpedoes. "We also find incomprehensible that this agreement was not fully disclosed even to those committees of Congress charged with receiving highly classified briefings – apparently at the request of the Russian premier. "But agreement to his request is even more disturbing since the Russian sales could have brought sanctions against Russia in accordance with a 1992 U.S. law sponsored by Sen. John McCain and then-Sen. Al Gore." In addition to Shultz, the signers included former defense secretaries Caspar Weinberger, James R. Schlesinger, Donald Rumsfeld and Frank C. Carlucci; former national security advisers Zbigniew Bzezinski and Brent Scowcroft; former secretaries of state James A. Baker III, Henry Kissinger and Lawrence S. Eagleburger, and former CIA Director R. James Woolsey. Those men, coming from both the Democratic and Republican parties, served in the highest levels of leadership positions dating from the current Clinton-Gore administration as far back as that of President Richard M. Nixon. Their statement was issued shortly before a Senate hearing Thursday on Gore's covert agreements with Chernomyrdin that made it possible for Russia to sell conventional arms as well as nuclear weapons technology to Iran in secret, thus avoiding American sanctions. The Clinton-Gore administration tried, without success, to get the Senate to hold this hearing behind closed doors. Under the secret agreement with Chernomyrdin, Gore committed the United States not to impose on Russia the sanctions required by the United States law, which he had co-authored, on nations that sell advanced conventional arms or lethal aid to terrorist nations. The State Department has long designated Iran as a sponsor of terrorism, terming it a "rogue state." In a secret letter to Gore, Chernomyrdin said he was "counting" on the vice president's cooperation in keeping Congress in the dark. Chernomyrdin has since been driven from public office in disgrace, accused of having corrupt dealings with various business interests in Russia. In a Jan. 13 "Dear Igor" letter to Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, labeled "secret," Secretary of State Madeleine Albright acknowledged that "without [Gore's agreement in secret with Chernomyrdin] Russia's conventional arms sales to Iran would have been subject to sanctions based on various provisions of our laws."