"Harry Krause" wrote in message
...
NOYB wrote:

"Harry Krause" wrote in message
...
NOYB wrote:

"Harry Krause" wrote in message
...
Backyard Renegade wrote:

Let me ask a question here. Is it at all possible that the
convoys
of
trucks tracked into Seria the last few weeks while the French,
Russians, and Germans held the majority of the member countries
back,
were the very carefully accounted for WMD moving to the Bekka
(sp?)
valley in Lebanon? Could we really know where they are

As to your question, certainly it is possible, but it is unlikely.
The
Israelis, who are far more sophisticated in these matters than we
are,
would have noticed.

Hehehe. You haven't been paying attention. The Israeli's *did*
notice.
Read:

Syria denies hiding Iraqi weapons
Sharon: Israel investigating reports
Wednesday, December 25, 2002 Posted: 3:13 PM EST (2013 GMT)



A bit naive about the Israelis, are we?

Me, naive? You said "the Israeli's would have noticed" convoys of large
trucks heading into Syria. I told you they already *did* notice...and I
provided a link from ONE YEAR AGO to prove it.

What's your spin now that you've been made to eat your words?



And the follow-up to a nothing report is?

I'm waiting.


LA Times
December 30, 2003

THE WEAPONS FILES
Banned Arms Flowed Into Iraq Through Syrian Firm
Files found in Baghdad describe deals violating U.N. sanctions and offer a
glimpse into the murky world of weapons smuggling and the ties between
'rogue states.'

By Bob Drogin and Jeffrey Fleishman, Times Staff Writers


DAMASCUS, Syria - A Syrian trading company with close ties to the ruling
regime smuggled weapons and military hardware to Saddam Hussein between 2000
and 2003, helping Syria become the main channel for illicit arms transfers
to Iraq despite a stringent U.N. embargo, documents recovered in Iraq show.

The private company, called SES International Corp., is headed by a cousin
of Syria's autocratic leader, Bashar Assad, and is controlled by other
members of Assad's Baath Party and Alawite clan. Syria's government assisted
SES in importing at least one shipment destined for Iraq's military, the
Iraqi documents indicate, and Western intelligence reports allege that
senior Syrian officials were involved in other illicit transfers.

Iraqi records show that SES signed more than 50 contracts to supply tens of
millions of dollars' worth of arms and equipment to Iraq's military shortly
before the U.S.-led invasion in March. They reveal Iraq's increasingly
desperate search in at least a dozen countries for ballistic missiles,
antiaircraft missiles, artillery, spare parts for MIG fighter jets and
battle tanks, gunpowder, radar systems, nerve agent antidotes and more.

The Bush administration accused Damascus in March of sending night-vision
goggles and other military equipment into Iraq, but U.S. officials now say
the White House was unaware of the extent of the illicit weapons traffic.

Other gaps in Washington's efforts to stem the flow of black-market weapons
and missile technology to outlaw states emerged this month when Libya
revealed that it had procured medium-range missiles and prohibited nuclear
technology despite U.S. and U.N. sanctions.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry did not respond to numerous faxes and telephone
calls asking for clarification of SES's activities. SES also has not
responded to requests by The Times for an interview. In an e-mail Monday,
the company termed "false" any suggestion that it was involved in illicit
trade but did not address any of the specific cases.

The White House previously has accused Syria of sheltering fugitives from
the ousted Iraqi regime, of letting Islamic militants cross into Iraq to
attack coalition forces, and of refusing to release at least $250 million
that Hussein's regime stashed in Syrian banks.

Files from the Baghdad office of Al Bashair Trading Co., the largest of
Iraq's military procurement offices, provide no new evidence about chemical,
biological or nuclear weapons in Iraq. And not every contract for
conventional weapons was filled.

But the successful deals - such as the delivery of 1,000 heavy machine guns
and up to 20 million bullets for assault rifles - helped Baghdad's
ill-equipped army grow stronger before the war began in March. Some supplies
may now be aiding the insurgency against the U.S.-led occupation.

And the files reviewed by The Times - about 800 pages of signed contracts,
shipping manifests, export documents, bank deposits, minutes of meetings and
more - offer a rare glimpse into the murky world of international arms
smuggling and the ties between countries such as Syria and North Korea,
which the administration calls "rogue states," and the ousted Iraqi regime.
The documents illustrate the clandestine networks and complex deceptions
Iraq used to evade U.N. sanctions and scrutiny by U.S. intelligence. Those
include extensive use of front companies, sham contracts, phony export
licenses, kickbacks and money laundering schemes.

A three-month investigation by The Times has found:

.. A Polish company, Evax, signed four contracts with Iraq and successfully
shipped up to 380 surface-to-air Volga/SA-2 missile engines to Baghdad
through Syria. The last batch was delivered in December 2002, a month after
the U.N. Security Council warned Iraq that it faced "serious consequences"
if it continued to violate U.N. resolutions.

.. South Korea's Armitel Co. Ltd. shipped $8 million worth of sophisticated
telecommunications equipment for what Iraqi documents said was "air
defense." The company is now submitting bids to the U.S.-led occupation
authority for contracts to improve telephone and Internet service from
Baghdad to Basra.

.. Russia's Millenium Company Ltd. signed an $8.8-million contract in
September 2002 to supply mostly American-made communications and
surveillance gear to Iraq's intelligence service. The company's general
manager in Moscow later wrote to suggest "the preparation of a sham
contract" to deceive U.N. weapons inspectors, documents show.

.. Slovenia's STO Ravne company, then a state-owned entity, shipped 20 large
battle tank barrels identified as "steel tubes" to SES in February 2002. The
next month, Slovenia's Defense Ministry blocked the company from exporting
50 more tank barrels to Syria. Overall, STO Ravne's secret contract called
for delivering 175 tank barrels to Iraq.

.. Two North Korean officials met the head of Al Bashair at SES offices in
Damascus a month before the war to discuss Iraq's payment of $10 million for
"major components" for ballistic missiles. U.S. intelligence agencies were
unaware of the deal at the time, or of a meeting 10 months earlier in which
Iraqi officials authorized a $1.9-million down payment to Pyongyang through
SES.

.. Massachusetts-based Cambridge Technology Inc. sold four optical scanners,
which can be adapted to help divert laser-guided missiles, to a student in
Canada. He had the equipment shipped to Amman, Jordan, and told the company
he was donating it to a university whose name he now says he cannot
remember. Without the U.S. company's knowledge, the real buyer was the Iraqi
military.

Iraq's Al Bashair Trading Co. handled all those deals and scores of others.
Its English-speaking director-general, Munir A. Awad, fled to Syria during
the war and now is living there "under government protection," according to
an intelligence report in Washington.

Filling an entire floor of a dingy downtown Baghdad office building, Al
Bashair was the largest of 13 known companies, including an Iraqi
intelligence operation called M-19, that Hussein's military used to evade
the U.N. arms embargo and other sanctions, according to a confidential U.N.
report on Iraq's procurement networks.

Al Bashair had special status, however. Hussein personally ordered the
company to deal directly with foreign brokers and suppliers, the U.N. report
notes. It estimated the value of Al Bashair's sanctions-busting deals at
between $30 million and $1 billion a year in the 1990s. Al Bashair also
served another key role: It helped launder and hide vast sums of cash for
the Iraqi dictator and his closest aides.

Three Al Bashair contracts from 1993 to 1995, for example, indicated that
Iraq had purchased $410 million, $500 million and $1.2 billion worth of
sugar. U.N. inspectors found that most of the money was diverted to banks in
Panama, the Bahamas and Monaco.

"The deals for sugar were a way to get money out of Iraq," said a former
U.N. inspector who studied the scam. "They would pay $10,000 to a trade
company for $100 of sugar. And the rest of the money went into offshore
accounts."

The U.N. Security Council imposed comprehensive sanctions after Iraq invaded
Kuwait in 1990. They included a full arms embargo, a trade ban and a freeze
on Iraq's assets and financial dealings abroad. As a result, Iraq's regime
became increasingly dependent on smuggling - and arms smugglers became
increasingly creative at evading the sanctions.

When they returned to Iraq in late November 2002 after four years' absence,
U.N. weapons inspectors thus focused on smuggling in their search for
evidence of proscribed missiles and chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

"We went one by one to every single [military] company we knew of in Iraq,"
said a senior U.N. inspector, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Al
Bashair was target No. 1 on that list."

On March 2, 30 inspectors from the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency
arrived without notice to check reports that Al Bashair had put public
tenders out on the Internet to buy high-strength aluminum tubes. The CIA had
insisted the tubes could be used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.

IAEA experts, customs experts, computer specialists and others locked the
doors, unplugged phones and grilled Munir, the company's director, in his
office. Before leaving, they copied 4,000 documents and downloaded data from
office computers. They found no signs of nuclear-related procurement.

Five days later, a team from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and
Inspection Commission, the chief U.N. weapons hunting group, launched
another surprise raid to check intelligence that Al Bashair had helped
Hussein acquire mobile biological laboratories to churn out germ weapons.
Again, they found no evidence.

The war began less than two weeks later. Days after U.S. troops entered
Baghdad in April, Christoph Reuter, an investigative reporter for the German
newsmagazine Stern, removed selected files from the abandoned Al Bashair
office. He later provided the records and cooperated with The Times, which
had the documents translated from Arabic and verified their contents with
interviews in more than a dozen countries.

The Iraqi weapons files provide the first public evidence of Syria's
extensive arms trade with Hussein's regime.

Most of Iraq's known arms smuggling schemes in the 1990s went through
Jordan. Many involved "one man, one fax" offices set up by Iraqi agents or
local businessmen for a specific deal. By 1998, U.N. inspectors had
identified 146 Jordanian companies operating as fronts for Iraq.

Heavy pressure from Washington and other capitals finally forced Jordan's
government to crack down.

Neighboring Syria, in contrast, had fought with the U.S.-led coalition
against Iraq in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and had no known role supporting
Iraq in the 1990s. Neither SES nor any other Syrian company is listed in
confidential U.N. records that identify more than 350 companies from 43
nations that U.N. inspectors suspect helped supply prohibited unconventional
weapons materiel to Iraq prior to 1998.

But the crippling of Iraq's smuggling rings in Jordan coincided with a
dramatic change in Syria. The country's strongman, Hafez Assad, had been a
bitter rival of Hussein for most of his three-decade reign. But the Damascus
dictator died in June 2000 and his son, Bashar Assad, assumed power. Syria's
long-frozen relations with Iraq soon began to thaw.

In November 2000, a newly repaired pipeline from Basra in southern Iraq
began carrying 150,000 to 200,000 barrels a day of discounted oil to Syria.
Another pipeline to Syria from northern Iraq opened in 2002 to carry another
60,000 barrels a day.

The flow was outside the U.N.-run "oil for food" program, which allowed Iraq
to export oil to buy food, medicine and humanitarian items. Experts say
Syria kept the contraband Iraqi oil for domestic use, sold its own oil at
higher prices on world markets and pocketed profits of up to $1 billion a
year.

In return, diplomats and intelligence experts say, Baghdad got easy access
to weapons and so many smuggled goods that it opened a trade office in
Tartus, Syria's chief port. Baghdad also got access to the outside world:
Iraqi officials, often holding counterfeit passports, increasingly used the
airport in Damascus to fly abroad.

"Syria became the most important ally for Iraq in the region, and helped it
come out of its global isolation," said a Washington-based diplomat.
"Damascus became the gateway for Iraq."

Experts say money may have mattered more than politics in the new alliance.

"It was purely a matter of opportunity" for Syria, said an intelligence
official in the region. "I don't think empathy for Iraq came into it. It was
like, 'This is going to make me lots of money and I don't mind if it hurts
the Americans a little bit either.' "

Among those who prospered was SES International Corp., a conglomerate of
nine aviation, construction, oil, car and other divisions based in an
ndustrial area on the northeast outskirts of Damascus.

SES was founded in 1980. According to company documents, it has about $80
million in annual revenue and 5,000 employees. It is run by a small group of
businessmen and other powerful figures with family or clan ties to the Assad
regime.

Prominent among them is the president's cousin Asef Isa Shaleesh, the
general manager of SES. He is the son of the late dictator's half sister.
Another relative, Maj. Gen. Dhu Himma Shaleesh, heads the elite security
corps that protects the president. He recently told Western diplomats that
he had sold his stake in SES, but they were unable to confirm his claim.

Records reviewed by The Times show Asef Isa Shaleesh, the SES manager, made
at least four trips to the Al Bashair offices in Baghdad between September
2001 and August 2002 to sign or update more than 50 SES contracts to supply
Iraq's military.

Contract #23/A/2001, for example, was for SES delivery to Iraq of
Russian-designed heavy machine guns.

"The Iraqis have confirmed their reception of 1,000 pieces, according to the
contract," meeting notes from Nov. 11, 2001 read. "The Iraqi side is in the
process of paying the Syrians for a second delivery of 500 pieces of
Machines Gun BKC."

Syria's Foreign Ministry helped SES at least once, according to minutes of
meetings between Asef Isa Shaleesh and Munir, the Al Bashair director, on
April 7-8, 2002.

Four precision metal lathes from HMT Machines International Ltd. in
Bangalore, India, had "arrived in Baghdad," the notes said, but customs
officials in Malta had seized others destined for Iraq. Documents show that
Syria was listed as the final destination, and do not indicate that HMT knew
the lathes were headed for Iraq's military. It's unclear what Syria's
government knew.

But meeting notes said SES contacted the Syrian Ministry of Industry to
intervene with Maltese authorities to release the lathes. "The reply was
given by the Foreign Ministry of Syria to authorities in Malta saying the
machines belonged to the Syrian company SES," the notes said.

The Syrian regime came up again later in the same set of meetings. "The
Iraqi side requests the Syrian side to accelerate getting the approval for
the visit of two Iraq experts to enter Syria for the purpose of learning
about Kornet antitank missiles from Russia, which are available with the
Syrian Ministry of Defense," the notes read.

The documents do not indicate whether Syria approved the request. But a
Russian company, KBP Tula, had sold 1,000 portable, laser-guided Kornet
missiles to Syria.

The Clinton administration imposed sanctions against the company in 1999
under a statute that bars weapons sales to Syria and other nations that the
State Department lists as state sponsors of terrorism.

"Russia's foreign minister called the grounds for imposing the sanctions
farfetched back then," said Leonid B. Roshal, deputy director of KBP Tula,
in an interview in Moscow. "I was never taught these diplomatic niceties, so
I was much more straightforward and said, 'The dog may bark, but the caravan
will proceed.' "

Reached by telephone, Asef Isa Shaleesh, the general manager of SES,
initially invited a Times reporter visiting Damascus to his office for an
interview the next day. But an aide said the next day that Shaleesh "had
unexpectedly gone to Romania" and later went to Russia. He has not replied
since to numerous telephone calls, e-mails and faxes.

Western intelligence had traced some of the SES deals by mid-2002, two years
after they began, With reports indicating illicit transfers into Iraq, the
U.S. Embassy complained to the government in Damascus that summer. Assad
replied that Syria would not violate U.N. sanctions.

"The president said, 'If you know of any cases, tell us,' " a Western
official recalled. When evidence was provided, he added, "the Syrians would
allege that that's been stopped."

No evidence has surfaced to show that Assad approved the SES deals with
Iraq. But "sanctions-busting at this level would have been hard to keep from
the president," a Western intelligence official said. An official from
another government agreed. "We think it very unlikely that Bashar was not
aware of this," he said.

He noted that two North Koreans flew to SES headquarters in Damascus in
February 2003, a month before the war, to meet Munir, the director of Al
Bashair.

"A North Korean is not a tourist," the official said. "Either Syria gave
direct approval. Or it turned a blind eye."

IAEA inspectors reconstructed a report of the meeting from an erased
computer hard drive that they had downloaded at Al Bashair in March. The
sit-down at SES apparently focused on Pyongyang's inability to deliver $10
million of sophisticated ballistic missile technology - and its flat refusal
to return the $10 million.

"The North Koreans said, 'It's too hot to refund your money,' " an official
familiar with the report said.

The Times also reviewed a report on another meeting with the North Koreans
ten months earlier. On April 8, 2002, Al Bashair approved payment of
$1,975,517 to SES "as down payment in favor of the North Korean side. Ten
percent of the sum is deducted for the Syrian side."

U.S. intelligence was unaware until this fall of North Korea's deal with
Iraq. In the end, Iraq got neither the missiles nor its refund.

Western intelligence reports allege that several Syrian officials or their
adult children were involved in shipments of tank engines, treads for
armored personnel carriers, fuel pumps for missiles and other military
equipment to Iraq.

One Syrian named in an intelligence report as a "key player" is Firas Tlass,
head of MAS Economic Group, a business conglomerate based in Damascus. In an
interview, Tlass said his companies had shipped textiles, computers and
steel bars to Iraq since the late 1990s. But he said Israeli intelligence
had spread false reports that he also sold weapons.

"I'm the son of the Syrian defense minister and we're Israel's enemy and
they want to discredit the Syrian government and my father," Tlass said.
"The only offer my company ever made to the Iraqi military was camouflage
field jackets and they turned us down."

Syria's arms trade hit the headlines in March this year when Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld publicly accused Damascus of smuggling
night-vision goggles and other military supplies to Iraq. He said Washington
viewed "such trafficking as hostile acts and would hold the Syrian
government accountable."

Syria's foreign minister called the charge "unfounded" and "an attempt to
cover up what his forces have been committing against civilians in Iraq."

Damascus has sought to repair relations. Washington has praised Syria's
assistance in rounding up suspected members of Al Qaeda since the Sept. 11
attacks. But President Bush signed a bill Dec. 12 barring export of military
and dual-use items - equipment that could have civilian and military uses -
to Syria until the White House certifies that Damascus has withdrawn troops
from Lebanon, has cut support for Hamas and other terrorist groups, has
stopped proscribed missile and chemical and biological weapons programs, and
has acted to prevent militants from entering Iraq to attack coalition
forces.

In contrast, the companies that knew the weapons and other sensitive
supplies they sold to SES actually were destined for Iraq - a clear
violation of U.N. sanctions - have faced little pressure. South Korea's
Armitel Co. Ltd. is an example.

A 1998 spinoff from giant Samsung Electronics, Armitel develops and
manufactures digital microwave systems for wireless communications. It is
based in a high-tech industrial complex south of Seoul.

Armitel had signed contracts in 2001 and 2002 with SES totaling $23,431,487,
the Iraqi files said.

On April 7, 2002, for example, Armitel's chairman inked a $1,859,862.18
contract with SES for "optical transmission, channel bank and auxiliary
items."

But records labeled "secret" in the Al Bashair files show the Armitel
equipment was "connected with the supply of air defense" and that the real
buyer was the Salahaddin Co., based in northern Iraq, which was trying to
develop a radar system to detect U.S. stealth bombers.

In an interview, Lee Dae Young, the 50-year-old chairman of Armitel, said he
knew his equipment was headed to Iraq despite U.N. sanctions. But he said he
thought he was helping Baghdad upgrade telephone and Internet service.

"We sold Iraq an optical cable system," Lee said. "Actually, now that this
is over, I can tell you. We sold it to Syrians and they took it to Iraq."

Armitel had sent $8 million worth of equipment to Syria when U.S.
intelligence got wind of the shipments in mid-2002. After the U.S. Embassy
in Seoul complained, South Korea's Ministry of Commerce ordered Armitel to
stop further shipments. An investigation was begun but Armitel was not
charged. The company recently submitted proposals to the U.S.-controlled
Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad for contracts to build a
telecommunications network from Baghdad to Basra.

Another supplier to Iraq's military was Slovenia's RTO Ravne. The
state-owned company, then an arms manufacturer, agreed in the fall of 2001
to supply 175 tank barrels - called "steel tubes" in the documents - to the
Saddam Co. near Fallouja, one of Iraq's largest producers of artillery,
armored vehicles and other heavy military equipment. The $6.3-million deal
had a twist. On paper, the "tubes" went to the Al Heeti Co. in Jordan. In
reality, SES handled the deal.

On March 7, 2002, the fourth shipment of five tank barrels arrived at Tartus
from Slovenia aboard the Diane A, an Italian ship. Munir, the Al Bashair
chief in Baghdad, immediately sent an urgent letter to SES, asking the
Syrian company to "take the necessary steps to take over the container and
forward it to us as soon as possible."

Later that month, Slovenia's Ministry of Defense announced it had blocked
the export by RTO Ravne of 50 smoothbore barrels for the Syrian army's T-72
main battle tanks.

RTO Ravne has since been broken up and privatized. It's unclear how many of
the tank barrels ultimately got through to Iraq. Dusan Pahor, the STO Ravne
quality control manager whose signature appears on the specification
documents, declined to comment on the deal. His supervisor, who identified
himself as Mr. Studancik, confirmed the contracts for "tubes" were a sham.
"Yeah, yeah, it was tank barrels," he said. "That is correct."

Two Russian companies also had clandestine deals with SES as the war
approached. Moscow-based Millenium Co. Ltd. signed an $8.8-million contract
on Sept. 14, 2002 to provide radio frequency equipment, transmitters, mobile
eavesdropping systems and other surveillance gear to SES. The contract
specified that Millenium would supply equipment from such U.S. companies as
Hewlett Packard, Cisco Systems and MITEQ, as well companies in Germany,
Canada, France and Japan.

Al Bashair records show, however, that the Millenium representative in
Baghdad had met on July 25 with two "representatives of the Intelligence
Service" in order to "come to agreement on concluding the contract."

On Sept. 29, the general director of Millenium, an Iraqi exile named Hasam
Khalidi, signed a letter advising Al Bashair of the need to "consider the
preparation of a sham contract" to conceal the deal "in case other
authorities, including United Nations inspectors, want to see a copy of the
contract.. The services and materials to be delivered should look as for
civilian use so they will not attract attention of those authorities."

In an interview, Khalidi denied writing the letter, denied dealing with SES,
and denied that his company had done anything to evade or violate U.N.
sanctions. Khalidi argued instead that he had a legitimate business deal to
sell bugging equipment to Iraq's Interior Ministry.

"I didn't see anything immoral in it," he said.

"Someone in Iraq is going to be surprised about a monitoring system? I could
have stood up and said, 'Aren't you ashamed!' "

In the end, he said the war intervened and the deal collapsed. "Nothing ever
happened," he said. "It's a pity."

Al Bashair records also show that a Russian company called TsNIIM-Invest, an
offshoot of a state-run science center, signed several agreements with SES
between August and December 2001 to supply $1.7 million worth of large
"tubes" suitable for artillery and an "electro-chemical workshop" to the
Saddam Co. near Fallouja.

Valentin Petrovich Kuznetsov, the technical director of TsNIIM-Invest in
Moscow, declined an interview request.

"As for the tubes, I can tell you that this thing never materialized," he
said. "It just didn't happen. There was a lot of fuss about it. But nothing
was proven. That is all I can tell you now."

Iraqi officials also made 15 visits before the war to a Russian company
called Aviakonversiya. The Moscow-based company specializes in producing GPS
jammers, portable units that distort signals used by satellite-based
navigation systems. During the war, U.S. aircraft struck several sites where
the jammers' radio frequency was detected.

But Oleg Antonov, general director of Aviakonversiya, said the jammers
weren't his because the Iraqi delegations looked but never bought.

"Frankly, I would have had no qualms selling this stuff to Iraq," Antonov
said. "We wouldn't have sold this to them directly. We would have done it
the way everybody was doing it. We would have sold it to some third
country."

Antonov added that he would be "happy and proud" if he "knew for sure that
our equipment was used in Iraq and was a success there.. It would be the
best advertisement for our production."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------


No mention of WMD's in this article...but plenty of proof of pre-war
Syria/Iraq cooperation and illegal arms trading.