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EYE ON THE GULF
Who really built
Iraq's arsenal?
Germany biggest offender in covert sale
of weapons to Baghdad, says G2 report
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Posted: February 24, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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