Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Impeach George W. Bush -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jlallen who wrote (14370)	8/31/2002 12:47:57 AM
From: Tadsamillionaire	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93284

Iraq evaded U.N. sanctions in the 1990s, importing military equipment to build missiles and nuclear weapons from companies in Eastern Europe and Russia, according to unpublished U.N. weapons inspection reports. The American arms control researchers who obtained the reports conclude that Saddam Hussein's shopping spree is likely to intensify as the enforcement of sanctions wanes and Iraq's revenue from illegally smuggled oil grows. The findings by Gary Milhollin, director of the Washington-based Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, a nonprofit watchdog group, and researcher Kelly Motz, are being published in the July-August issue of Commentary magazine. The unpublished U.N. weapons inspection reports were obtained by sources outside the United Nations, according to Motz. Their release comes at a time when the U.N. Security Council is engaged in tough negotiations on a U.S.-British proposal to toughen enforcement of a decade-old arms embargo on Iraq. "The new proposal — whether adopted by the U.N. or not — has little hope of stopping the Iraqis from sneaking in what they need to rebuild their weapons sites and sneaking out the oil to pay for it," they wrote in the article made available Monday. "Even when the U.N. inspection regime was in place, the Iraqis had already figured out how to do just that." A British diplomat disagreed with the researchers' claims. "The new resolution will set in place arrangements to monitor the flow of goods into Iraq and to crack down on illegal oil smuggling. So it's not right to claim that it will make no difference," the diplomat said on condition of anonimity. The Security Council imposed sanctions on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. The sanctions cannot be lifted until U.N. weapons inspectors certify that Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs have been dismantled along with its long-range missile program. But inspectors with the U.N. Special Commission, known as UNSCOM, left Iraq after seven years in December 1998 ahead of U.S. and British missile strikes launched to punish the country for not cooperating with inspectors. For the last 2 1/2 years, the Iraqi government has barred U.N. inspectors from returning, demanding instead that sanctions be lifted immediately. The two experts from the Wisconsin Project quote an UNSCOM assessment before the inspectors left in 1998 which said that throughout the 1990s Iraq imported goods from at least 20 different countries. On Iraq's purchase list were "full-sized production lines, industrial know-how, high-tech spare parts and raw materials," the UNSCOM report was quoted as saying. The reports cited have never been made public by the United Nations. The contraband cargo was almost always flown or shipped to Jordan and then transported by truck across the border into Iraq, the researchers found. According to the report, Iraq decided in the early 1990s to target Eastern Europe, following the collapse of the Soviet empire, which spurred a wholesale weapons market. In the Commentary article, the experts describe trips by high-level Iraqi delegations to companies in Belarus, Ukraine, Romania and Russia. The only other company mentioned in the article is one based in Taiwan. Ewen Buchanan, spokesman for UNSCOM's successor agency, the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, said UNSCOM informed the Security Council over the years of evidence of ongoing efforts by Iraq to buy a variety of items, particularly in the missile area, though it didn't name any countries involved. The report published by Milhollin and Motz "showed sanctions didn't do what they were supposed to do because Iraq got hold of some banned items, but it also showed the value of inspections in that we uncovered some of this stuff," Buchanan said. The two researchers said the only way to shut down Iraq's smuggling network would be to control all cargo coming into Iraq and the oil going out — something the U.S.-British sanctions proposal before the Security Council tries to do. This would require cooperation of Iraq's neighbors, especially Jordan and Syria. But Jordan's Prime Minister Ali Abu-Ragheb said in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan circulated Monday that the U.S.-British plan would threaten the tiny kingdom's national security and stability. usatoday.com Felt the need to Repost the truth