Re: All the Iraqis can afford are IEDs, which are home-made. How can they possibly know about the latest Russian rocketry?
RUSSIAN EXPERTS REPORTEDLY GAVE IRAQ MISSILE AID
By JAMES RISEN
Published: March 5, 2004
A group of Russian engineers secretly aided Saddam Hussein's long-range ballistic missile program, providing technical assistance for prohibited Iraqi weapons projects even in the years just before the war that ousted him from power, American government officials say.
Iraqis who were involved in the missile work told American investigators that the technicians had not been working for the Russian government, but for a private company. But any such work on Iraq's banned missiles would have violated United Nations sanctions, even as the Security Council sought to enforce them.
Although Iraq ultimately failed to develop and produce long-range ballistic missiles and though even its permitted short-range missile projects were fraught with problems, its missile program is now seen as the main prohibited weapons effort that Iraq continued right up until the war was imminent.
After the first Persian Gulf war in 1991, Iraq was allowed only to keep crude missiles that could travel up to 150 kilometers, or about 90 miles, but the Russian engineers were aiding Baghdad's secret efforts illegally to develop longer-range missiles, according to the American officials.
Since the invasion last March, American investigators have discovered that the Russian engineers had worked on the Iraqi program both in Moscow and in Baghdad, and that some of them were in the Iraqi capital as recently as 2001, according to people familiar with the intelligence on the matter.
Because some of the Russian experts were said to have formerly worked for one of Russia's aerospace design centers, which remains closely associated with the state, their work for Iraq has raised questions in Washington about whether Russian government officials knew of their involvement in forbidden missile programs. ''Did the Russians really not know what they were doing?'' asked one person familiar with the United States intelligence reports.
A spokesman for the Russian Embassy in Washington denied any knowledge of the allegations of recent Russian technical support for Iraq's missile effort.
''The U.S. has not presented any evidence of Russian involvement,'' said Yevgeny Khorishko, a spokesman for the Russian Embassy.
Russia and the former Soviet Union were among Iraq's main suppliers of arms for decades before Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, leading to the first gulf war.
The Bush administration has previously said it had uncovered evidence that Iraq had unsuccessfully sought help from North Korea for its missile program, but had not disclosed the evidence that Iraq had also received Russian technical support.
C.I.A. and White House officials refused to comment on the matter, and people familiar with the intelligence say they believe that the administration has been reluctant to reveal what it knows about Moscow's involvement in order to avoid harming relations with President Vladimir V. Putin.
''They are hyper-cautious about confronting Putin on this,'' complained one intelligence source.
In his public testimony last week about the worldwide threats facing the United States, George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, restated Washington's longstanding concerns about Russia's controls over its missile and weapons technology, without mentioning the evidence of missile support for the Hussein government.
''We remain alert to the vulnerability of Russian W.M.D. materials and technology to theft or diversion,'' Mr. Tenet said. ''We are also concerned by the continued eagerness of Russia's cash-strapped defense, biotechnology, chemical, aerospace and nuclear industries to raise funds via exports and transfers -- which makes Russian expertise an attractive target for countries and groups seeking W.M.D. and missile-related assistance.''
The Iraq Survey Group, the United States team that has hunted for evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, also found indications that Baghdad had received assistance from sources in Ukraine, Belarus and Serbia, according to American officials.
In an interim report on the progress of the Iraq Survey Group made public in October, David A. Kay, then the C.I.A.'s chief weapons hunter, reported that his group had found ''a large volume of material and testimony by cooperating Iraq officials on Iraq's effort to illicitly procure parts and foreign assistance for its missile program.''
It listed several examples detailing assistance from foreign countries, but apart from North Korea, no other countries were identified.
More than 10 months after the end of major military operations in Iraq, American teams have still not found conclusive evidence that Iraq had any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, raising doubts about one of the Bush administration's main arguments for going to war. Since he resigned from his post last month, Dr. Kay has said he believes that Iraq largely abandoned the production of weapons of mass destruction after the first gulf war, and that it gradually destroyed its remaining stockpiles during the 1990's.
But Dr. Kay has said the evidence shows that Iraq tried to keep upgrading its ballistic missiles even as its other weapons programs were stalling out. In interviews with Iraqi scientists, examinations of documents and other sources, the Iraq Survey Group has determined that Iraq was actively seeking ways to upgrade its crude missile abilities in order to try to build a rocket fleet that could become a regional threat, reaching American forces based in neighboring countries.
American officials now say that the United Nations restrictions that allowed Iraq to keep missiles with ranges of up to 150 kilometers had an unintended effect. From the Iraqi perspective, it meant that it was still legal for Baghdad to continue some missile development activities, since short-range missiles were permitted.
By contrast, United Nations sanctions completely banned Iraq from keeping any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, and it now seems that Iraq eventually abandoned those programs.
Taking advantage of the loophole permitting short-range missiles, Iraq sought foreign advice on such technical matters as guidance and airframe systems in order to develop missiles with greater range and accuracy than its previous missiles, according to officials familiar with the intelligence. In his October interim report, Dr. Kay said Iraqi detainees and other sources had told American investigators that beginning in 2000, Mr. Hussein approved efforts to develop ballistic missiles with ranges from 400 to 1,000 kilometers.
Still, the evidence gathered by the Iraq Survey Group suggests that Iraq's missile development efforts were poorly organized and ultimately unsuccessful.
''They had too many scattered programs, and so they didn't focus their efforts on any one missile,'' said one person familiar with the intelligence on the matter.
When United Nations weapons inspectors returned to Iraq in late 2002 just before the war, they found that Iraq had produced short-range Samoud 2 missiles that had slightly longer ranges than the United Nations sanctions allowed. In the weeks before the war, Iraq agreed to destroy many of those missiles, but those highly publicized actions were not enough to convince the United States that Iraq was in compliance with United Nations sanctions. In fact, the evidence suggests that Iraq was seeking to upgrade to missiles with greater range and accuracy than the older, Scud-based Samoud.
After the war, the Iraq Survey Group found evidence that Iraq had agreed to pay North Korea $10 million for technical support to upgrade its ballistic missile program in violation of the sanctions. But American officials believe that North Korea never actually delivered anything to the Iraqis, even though it apparently kept Iraq's $10 million. By contrast, the Iraq Survey Group found evidence that the Russian missile engineers actually did provide technical support for the Iraqis for years.
The Bush administration's reluctance to raise publicly the issue of Russian support for Iraq's missile program appears to stem from the White House's effort to cultivate better diplomatic relations with Moscow, particularly in the wake of last year's tensions over the war in Iraq. Russia opposed the war, but President Bush and Mr. Putin have still developed a good personal relationship, and there seems much less residual tension between Washington and Moscow over the war than there does between the United States and France and Germany.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the United States has also appeared more willing to view Russia's fight with separatists in Chechnya as part of the global war on terror.
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