Iran military sales denied

Press, 6 April 1987, Page 8

Iran military sales denied

NZPA-Reuter Washington The White House has denied a report that the United States is continuing to ship arms or weapons-related equipment to Iran. “To the best of our knowledge, there have ben no illegal sales from the forbidden munitions list,” said a White House spokesman yesterday. The. Defence Department also denied that any military supplies had been sent to Iran since an Administration ban late last year. N.B.C. television, quoting American and foreign intelligence sources, reported on Saturday evening that the United States had been shipping weapons-related equipment to Iran as recently as last month. President Ronald Reagan banned arms shipments to Teheran after the Iran arms scandal broke last November. N.B;C. said the Pentagon was co-ordinating

shipments of anti-aircraft firing equipment. It said some shipments labelled “machine parts” had moved through Ostend, Belgium on aircraft of the Santa Lucia Airways, which it identified as run by the Central Intelligence Agency. N.B.C. said the equipment'was flown to Pakistan and transhipped on Pakistani civilian and military aircraft to Iran. A goal of the operation was to keep open a dialogue with elements of the Iranian regime who had been involved in the earlier American arms sales to Iran, the report said. Meanwhile, Associated Press reports that computers worth about SUS7O million ($l3O million) had been sold to Iran through United States contracts over the last three years.

But United States officials said the computers involved only elementary technology and did not have military significance.