North Korea sells arms to Ethiopia with U.S. OK

[Dreamer128]

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Bush administration allowed Ethiopia to complete a secret arms purchase from North Korea in an apparent violation of a U.N. Security Council sanctions resolution passed months earlier over its nuclear test, The New York Times reported in Sunday editions.

Citing unnamed U.S. officials from a number of agencies, the Times said the United States allowed the January arms delivery in part because Ethiopia was fighting Islamic militias in Somalia in an offensive that aided U.S. policies of combating religious extremists in the Horn of Africa.

A spokesman for the State Department declined to comment on the specifics of the arms shipment, but said the United States was "deeply committed to upholding and enforcing U.N. Security Council resolutions," the newspaper reported. No response from the Ethiopian Embassy was available.

Washington's former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, who helped push the resolution imposing sanctions on North Korea through the Security Council in October, said the United States should have told Ethiopia to send the weapons back.

"I know they have been helpful in Somalia, but there is a nuclear weapons program in North Korea that is unhelpful for everybody worldwide," the Times quoted Bolton as saying.

U.S. intelligence agencies reported in late January that an Ethiopian cargo ship that was probably carrying tank parts and other military equipment had left a North Korean port. The shipment's value was unclear, the Times said.

After a brief debate in Washington, it was decided not to block the arms deal and to press Ethiopia not to make future purchases, according to the report.

It was unclear if the United States ever reported the arms shipment to the Security Council, the Times said. But intelligence reports indicated that the cargo was likely to have included tank parts, leading at least some Pentagon officials to describe the shipment as a clear Security Council violation.

Several officials told the Times they first learned Ethiopia planned to receive military cargo from North Korea when the country's government alerted the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa after the U.N. measure imposing sanctions was adopted on October 14.

"The Ethiopians came back to us and said, 'Look, we know we need to transition to different customers, but we just can't do that overnight,'" the paper quoted a U.S. official as saying.

(Source: Reuters)

[Aerich]

Interesting.

The world turns and arms sales continue. As long as the "good guys" get them, very little is said. The problem is that good guys can turn into bad guys (see Iraq vs Iran in the 1980s).

Ah well, there's so much going into Africa anyway, it's probably just a drop in the bucket.

A curiosity: why was the decision not to block the arms sale (or to block it, for that matter) made internally among US departments? One would think it was a matter for the Security Council.

[robertthebard]

Because, when it's time for finger pointing, nobody can point at the UN. The only thing that I can see that they are good for is taking up space in NY that could be better used for parking, or a high rise hotel. Anything that might be the least be controversial, they stay out of, unless, of course, it can be done behind closed doors, w/out the world knowing about it. It's so much easier to have the US as the fall guy for anything dramatic.