December 1990

WHY WE MUST STOP THE DEALERS IN DEATH

SIT for a moment with the pilot of a French Air Force Jaguar as he streaks towards his Iraqi target, secure momentarily in the cramped cockpit, surrounded by the best computer-controlled flight and weapons technology his nation's military industrialists can provide, with the British and Italians having profited as well.

The last thing on his mind is the fact that the electronics warfare systems and radar tracking and locking onto his aircraft were designed and built in France. Or in its neighbour and great ally Germany.

He will know when a surface-to-air missile has him in its sights. But if evasive action or counter measures such as metal fragment chaff fail to throw it off and he becomes a victim of war he will not know that the missile which shot him down was perhaps a Roland, yet another joint French-German produced weapon, or even an Improved Hawk, built in the US. Neither will the allied infantryman on the Saudi-Kuwait border know much about the shell that ends his life having come from a US-built artillery piece, or even one that rolled off the production line in Austria.

And if our own worst nightmare is realised and an Australian warship in the Persian Gulf becomes the victim of a sea-skimming Exocet missile, its crew will hardly have time before it becomes an inferno to discuss the fact that it was put together by French factory workers.

In Israel's ordeal, it is galling for the residents of Tel Aviv to know that five German companies have directly helped Iraq upgrade the Scuds and so bring Israel and Riyadh within range.

While the great majority of Iraqi equipment is Soviet in manufacture or design, the shifting sands of Middle East politics over the past decade have allowed Saddam Hussein to build into his armoury a sophisticated and not insignificant amount of Western equipment. Much of the Russian equipment is outdated (and cheap). Not so the Western armaments.

Aircraft from France, the US and Italy, main battle tanks from Britain and the US, missiles and rockets from France, Germany and Brazil, artillery from South Africa and Austria, ships from Italy: the litany of shame. All were sold under the thin excuse that "if we don't sell them, someone else will". It is merely a echo of the drug dealer's justification.

Even tiny neutral Switzerland has had its fingers into Saddam's defence budget, supplying Iraq's Air Force with more than 70 Swiss-built Pilatus PC-7 and PC-9 trainers, which are easily converted to carry guns and missiles, and supplying armoured cars for Saddam's army.

That is no selective scenario. At sea, in the air and on the ground allied forces are constantly facing weaponry born in the arms factories of the West.

When the carnage in the Persian Gulf is halted, will President George Bush's vaunted New World Order declare the area off limits to arms dealers?Will the NWO choke off our new ally and brother-in-arms, President Assad of Syria, the Butcher of Lockerbie, for fear his nation will need to be the next target for US cruise missiles?

Military men, politicians and journalists around the world scoff at the very suggestion. Western manufacturers' avarice and their governments'blind-eye tolerance to their murderous cynicism have been so blatant in Iraq that there seems little chance history won't repeat itself there and in the nations around after a brief pause to bury the dead. The oil floods out, the arms flood in: that's the way of the Middle East.

Between 1980 and 1990, Iraq spent more than $46 billion 1 on weapons buying and development, according to the influential US aerospace magazine, Aviation Week and Space Technology. Quoting senior Israeli military officials, the magazine said most of this money was devoted to the development of the"most sophisticated equipment" in France and Germany.

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre, a Los Angeles-based group with close links to Israel, has documented 207 Western companies which wittingly or unwittingly assisted Iraq's military build-up effort, more than a third of them German(the old West, not the old East). As Germany celebrates its own triumph of democracy over despotism, an embarrassed Bonn has begun investigations into 170 firms with links to Iraq and has begun criminal proceedings against 25. It has also given Israel $190 million in what is widely regarded as conscience money.

Few such moves have surfaced in the US, Britain and, most notably, France, whose weapons are flourished on both sides of almost any war or skirmish you like to name. It has not simply been a matter of Iraq's buying off the shelf. So vast were his oil revenues that Saddam was able to have weapons systems tailor-made.

Much of this equipment was designed specifically for Iraqi needs, say the Israelis. It has proved too costly for the armed forces of the countries that developed it. The French Air Force would love to have some of these weapons systems.

The Iraqis have acquired laser-guided and electro-optically guided, air-launched weapon systems, electronic warfare systems and airborne warning and control systems. "Virtually all this advanced equipment is based on French technology, and some of it possibly is more advanced that equivalent US equipment," an Israeli official said.

Let's look at the case of Britain, so strident in its condemnation of Saddam, so strongly represented in the allied forces now opposing him. British exports of military hardware to Iraq have been officially embargoed since 1984 but much has slipped out, through leakage, political patronage and middle-men arms traders.

In November 1986, Alan Clark, staunch Thatcherite, former Trade Minister, now Minister for Defence Procurement, visited Baghdad. Whitehall, true to Mrs Thatcher's special relationship with the US, was of course backing Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war.

Stepping off a British Airways flight, Clark was given red carpet treatment by Iraqi trade officials, armed with British Government export credits. By 1988, Iraq had become Britain's third biggest export market for machine tools behind the US and Germany.

The main beneficiaries include:

* British Aerospace: Government-owned until recently, BAe provided rocket propellant for the Scud missile fleet in what now seems an outrageous deal.

* Thorn EMI: Supplied Cymbeline battlefield radar systems, believed to have been disabled by allied bombardment.

* BIMEC Industries of Wolverhampton: Built a metal treatment plant supposedly to refurbish tractors. It was used instead to recondition Russian tanks. Chairman Stan Smith claims he did know his plant was used for military purposes - "I think its dreadful, I'm not at all pleased with that". But he's not giving the money back.

* Racal Electronics: Supplied battlefield radios.

* Matrix Churchill: A London-based Iraqi-owned company which is believed to be at the centre of Iraq's military procurement in Europe. The three British directors were recently given bail on charges of breaching Britain's export credit licensing agreements, alleged to have allowed exports without declaring them to authorities. Some material went to Cardoen, a Chilean arms maker. Matrix helped buy the Chieftain tanks which British ground forces may soon encounter.

British and Irish firms fitted Saddam's palace, and with Belgian and Yugoslavian backers and labour helped build up to 30 bunkers and hardened aircraft shelters in which the allies believe his Air Force is hunkered down in northern Iraq. So far, the work has proved to be of excellent quality.

SO, HAVE the Western nations learned from the error of their permissiveness? Does the knowledge that yesterday's friend is today's foe daunt their selling zeal? Not likely. As recently as last March British Aerospace performed a series of firings of its Laserfire low-level air-defence system on a specially prepared test range in the Middle East. Interested onlookers included government officials from countries in the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

They were apparently impressed with what they saw. British Aerospace described the performance as "outstandingly successful". Ten missiles were fired and nine hit and destroyed their targets.

It's hardly likely that British Aerospace, in the interests of World Peace, will decline to sell its fabulous new missile to just about anyone who has the cash.

But most controversial of all is Germany. A briefing from Economics Minister Helmut Haussmann in August confirmed Bonn's worst fears, though some of the tears were those of the crocodile. Official eyes had been profitably averted for a long time.

Haussmann said three German companies had supplied Iraq with machinery, special steel and components to build the gas centrifuges needed for turning uranium into stuff suitable for nuclear weapons. In any dispassionate view, this is not merely criminal but lunacy.

Another company was the chief supplier for six state-of-the-art plants in Samarra (an area targeted in the allied bombardment) that made nerve and mustard gases. For any nation to have permitted this (and lack of action is permissiveness) would be criminal; for a nation with Germany's past, it defies comprehension.

Six firms have supplied parts for the so-called Supergun, whose barrel was discovered in production at a Sheffield firm. A German firm built the Saad-16 plant, Iraq's most advanced weapons-research centre.

Then, there's France. Many will remember the French Government was quite concerned that Prince Andrew might fall victim to the Exocet missile sold to Argentina. Such temporary embarrassment in Paris hasn't worried the salesmen on the ground in the Middle East.

France supplied weapons worth $6.4 billion to Iraq during the eight-year Gulf War against Iran, second only to the USSR. French arms exports fell from$4 billion in 1988 to $380 million in 1989 after Iran and Iraq negotiated a ceasefire. France is Iraq's biggest creditor, owed more than $6.35 billion.

The French plane maker Dassault-Breguet sold Iraq more than 100 of its supersonic Mirage fighters. Also in the air may appear up to 130 helicopters enthusiastically sold to Iraq by Aerospatiale, France's and the world's biggest helicopter manufacturer.

These include 35 SA 316 Alouette III anti-armour helicopters, about a dozen SA 321 Super Frelon anti-ship helicopters, 17 SA 330 Puma combat helicopters and as many as 70 SA 342 Gazelle anti-armour helicopters.

The fighters will be armed with the potent French-built Matra R-530 and R-550 Magic air-to-air missiles, and a number of aircraft are equipped to carry the infamous Exocet. The deadly missile is a perfect example of the glee with which weapon makers grasp the opportunity for more sales.

Within days of its stunningly successful use during the Falklands War, Exocet's makers had full-page advertisements in defence and aviation magazines world-wide expounding its advantages. They didn't actually say so but the message was clear: "It Really Works".

On the ground the Iraqis have French-German Roland 1 and 2 anti-aircraft missiles and, it is believed, they have also obtained some US-produced Improved Hawk surface-to-air missiles.

Iraq's airborne warning system is housed in a Soviet-built transport aircraft, but the radar, computers and other components are French-built and embody the latest technology.

With all this on offer no wonder the combined defence budgets of the Middle East grew to more than $77 billion 2 annually, an average of 30 per cent of their budgets. Ironically, the biggest buyers were Saudi Arabia and Iraq, which accounted for 14.6 and 14.1 per cent of the total.

The largest market for the arms salesmen was Saudi Arabia, which has an annual defence budget of $19 billion. What an interesting situation that will make if, as predicted by some of the most sophisticated think-tanks in the world, the Saudi monarchy is toppled in the next five years.

It's in the nature of the tragic Middle East that Israel's efforts to guarantee its own safety have themselves helped the arms salesmen's beguiling pitch to the Arabs.

The Israelis know there is no sentiment in the arms trade. Nothing personal, just business. During the long-running arms embargo against Rhodesia, Israeli-made Uzi submachineguns and munitions were arriving in Salisbury by the planeload. And Israel has conducted lots of (very profitable)arms business with South Africa.

But the South Africans were quite happy to provide more than 5,500 artillery pieces used by the Iraqi Army, most made by local subsidiaries of Western countries but including 100 G-5 155mm howitzers supplied by Armscor, South Africa's arms manufacturing arm. Nothing personal, just business.

When it comes to arming a nation it is mostly a matter of government-to-government and government-to-manufacturer negotiations.

And in the main, unless a government has specific bans on sales to any particular nation, the only thing that matters is the ability of the buyer to sign the cheque and take delivery of the shipment.

Another artillery piece used by the Iraqis is the GHN-45, which is manufactured in Austria. The Austrians sold 200 of these weapons to Jordan, which passed them on to Iraq. This illustrates the use of the sham end-user certificate, where a country politically acceptable to the manufacturing nation takes delivery and ships on to a pariah State.

An international arms dealer who has supplied an estimated $1.6 billion in weapons to Iraq believes the worst part of the US-Iraq conflict still lies ahead. Sarkis G.Soghanalian, whose annual earnings of $12 million rank him among the world's richest arms brokers, says that, despite intensive American bombing of Iraq, the ground war will be agonisingly slow because the dug-in Iraqis are "fierce and hardened soldiers".

He is a man who should know, having supplied Iraq with the bulk of its weapons during its long war with Iran during the 1980s. And he spent considerable time on Iraq's front lines with its troops and commanding officers. Soghanalian also is facing trial in April in Miami on charges he conspired to ship to Iraq 103 civilian helicopters modified for military use. Nothing personal, just business.