POLITICS-YUGOSLAVIA: Iraqgate rocks Yugoslavia

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Oct 28 2002 (IPS) - Only days after it removed suspicions it was making chemical weapons, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) is found to have been engaging in a secret arms trade with Iraq.

Sfor, the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping force in neighbouring Bosnia, discovered that Yugoslavia has been supplying weapons to Iraq through the state-run military trading firm Jugoimport-SDPR.

The firm’s head Jovan Cekovic and deputy defence minister Gen Ivan Djokic who was in charge of arms trade were immediately sacked. Bosnian authorities sacked top managers at the state-run Orao factory from where the firm was sourcing goods.

"This was just the beginning of the action in this area," senior government official Nebojsa Covic told journalists in Belgrade. "The new administration cannot allow itself the luxury of ruining everything it did in the past two years. The remnants of the old regime are trying to torpedo our new course that differs profoundly from the recent past."

The government of Slobodan Milosevic, which faced a strict UN embargo on trade, oil and arms, was known to have engaged in clandestine trade with Iraq which was also facing a UN embargo. The government of Slobodan Milosevic ruled for ten years until it fell from power two years ago. Iraq still faces UN sanctions that include a strict arms embargo.

The latest scandal came to light after Sfor inspected the Orao military factory in Bijeljina town in Republika Srpska, a Serb part of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Sfor’s report, handed over both to Bosnian and Yugoslav authorities, gave details of continued military cooperation of Orao with Iraq via the Yugoslavia based Jugoimport-SDPR. The documents Sfor found included contracts for delivery of spare parts for Russian-built Iraqi fighter jets and anti-aircraft systems. The contracts were written on Jugoimport-SDPR stationery.

The documents contained instructions to Iraqis on concealment of equipment and spare parts for purposes of a UN inspection. The Iraqis were instructed to remove all manuals and catalogues written in Serbian. Orao offered to dismantle all equipment ahead of any UN inspection and to reassemble it 10 days after the inspection, documents at the plant showed.

Military analysts say that arms deals with Iraq are likely to have been carried out by many private arms companies that flourished in the Balkans in the nineties, breaching UN sanctions constantly.

"They are not willing to give up millions of dollars just because the Belgrade regime changed two years ago," says military analyst Aleksandar Radic. "The connections between the arms dealers are the strongest and the most clandestine."

Analysts say that the scandal will endanger the re-integration of Yugoslavia into the international community after a decade of isolation under Milosevic. "The country is only a step away from being admitted to the Council of Europe and Partnership for Peace Programme of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation)," analyst Miroslav Lazanski told IPS. "But there are the remnants of the old regime that never want this to happen."

In an effort to ally itself with the U.S. against terrorism, the new government in Yugoslavia recently handed over confidential files detailing military cooperation with Iraq in the seventies and the eighties to the U.S., well-placed military sources told IPS. Following the September 11 attacks President Vojislav Kostunica repeatedly denied any links with countries marked as enemies of Western powers.

These documents provide details of Iraq’s anti-aircraft defence system and of the communication system that links the main command with operation units, the sources say. They also contain blueprints of concrete shelters and underground facilities. Several of these facilities were built by Yugoslav companies.

Yugoslavia also provided technology for mass production of ammunition. Iraqi planes and weaponry were overhauled at Yugoslav military centres until the nineties.

POLITICS-YUGOSLAVIA: Iraqgate rocks Yugoslavia

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Oct 28 2002 (IPS) - Only days after it removed suspicions it was making chemical weapons, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) is found to have been engaging in a secret arms trade with Iraq.
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