- When U.S. troops and allies engage Iraqi forces in battle
next month, they will be facing units armed with European weapons continuously
delivered to Iraq throughout the course of the embargo - including arms
delivered in the last few weeks, reports Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, an
online intelligence news resource.
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- The biggest offending European nation in supplying illicit
arms to Iraq is Germany, reports G2, even while Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder
has joined France's Prime Minister Jacque Chirac as the leading cheerleaders
for giving international arms inspectors more time to determine if Iraq
is in violation of United Nations resolutions.
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- According to the latest issue of G2 Bulletin, Iraq's
own reports to the United Nations Security Council show that German firms
made up the bulk of suppliers for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs.
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- "Even while playing the role of peacemaker looking
only for solid proof of arms violations by Iraq, German Chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder knows the truth - that he and his country have provided much
of the equipment and expertise Iraq has needed to reinvigorate its efforts
to build weapons of mass destruction," the newsletter reports.
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- The German intelligence agency BND is believed to have
served as a silent partner in a Hamburg front company, Water Engineering
Trading or WET, which facilitated the export of materiel needed for such
arms, the report says. Half of the precursor materials and a majority of
the tools and the technology for their conversion into weapons were sold
to Iraq by German firms -- both prior to and after the 1991 Gulf War.
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- The German firm Preussag is the leading supplier of chemical
agents and production equipment to Iraq, according to documents turned
over to the U.N. by Baghdad. Preussag is a subsidiary of Europe's largest
travel agent and tour operator TUI. It is also a company that has been
very supportive of Schroeder. In early 1998, when Schroeder was running
for re-election as prime minister of the state of Lower Saxony, he had
the state buy 51 percent of Preussag's troubled steel division to the tune
of $500 million, claiming that 12,000 jobs were at stake. Schroeder went
on to win the crucial election, setting him up to become chancellor.
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- Included on the Iraqi suppliers' lists are other German
corporate names: Hoechst, Daimler-Benz, Siemens, Kloeckner, Carl Zeiss,
Schott Glas, Karl Kolb-Pilot Plant and WTB (Walter Thosti Boswau). The
WTB undertaking was supported by a credit guarantee for several hundred
million German marks by Hermes, a German government export and credit insurer.
Rhein-Bayern supplied Iraq with eight mobile toxicological labs housed
in sand-colored, camouflage-painted Magirus trucks.
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- Germany may be the biggest offender in Europe, but it
is not alone as a weapons supplier to Iraq. Western intelligence sources
marked more than 20 countries as "Iraqi arms embargo busters"
and the list could be longer, according to G2. The suppliers have been
using mainly Syrian or Lebanese ports as ways for passage to Iraq.
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- According to U.N. officials and American military intelligence
collected by the Defense Intelligence Agency, "a powder-like agent"
entered Iraq legally late in 2002, G2 reports. The U.N. had approved the
import of 25 metric tons of a material designated for the Samara pharmaceutical
industry in the framework of the "oil for food program." The
material, called Aerosil, is an important ingredient in the manufacturing
of various types of chemical weapons, including nerve gas. More than 100
metric tons of this material, manufactured in Germany, were bought and
delivered just before the first Persian Gulf War. A sensitive British intelligence
document claims that a similar product, described as "silicon diaroxide,"
arrived in Iraq more recently. Analysts say that this "powder-like
substance" is also used to produce the VX agent capable of endangering
the lives of persons even when wearing protective suits. According to the
British, there is no way to determine the exact quantities of VX in Iraqi
hands, G2 reports.
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- Croatia, Serbia, Albania, Slovakia, Macedonia and Montenegro
continue to provide Iraq with conventional weapons, according to G2 sources.
Ukraine is believed to have sold more than $100 million worth of military
equipment to Iraq.
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- http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=31190
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