Nations pour arms into Iran-Iraq war

Press, 10 July 1987, Page 25

Nations pour arms into Iran-Iraq war

By JAMES McCARTNEY NZPA-KRD Washington While publicly deploring the Iran-Iraq war and repeatedly calling for a cease-fire, the leading nations of the world, and many smaller ones, have poured more than SUS 32 billion ($53.76 billion) in arms into the war. At least 50 nations have sold weapons to one side or the other over the nearly seven years since the war was launched, and the flow of arms today continues at a high level, both Government officials and outside experts have said. “Greed” is a reason for the continued arms sales, said one State Department official who asked not to be identified. “It is as simple as that ... Sheer, unmitigated greed.” Even historically neutral Switzerland has shipped war material to Iran through an Italian cover, and has at times aided Iraq. At least two dozen countries, including the United States and the Soviet Union, have provided weapons to both sides. Others in this group include North Korea, China, France, West Germany, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Italy and Britain. This complex picture of the flow of arms to the warring parties has been

pieced together from interviews with State Department, Pentagon and White House officials. Several experts outside government also provided information, including Anthony Cordesman, adjunct professor in national security studies at Georgetown University and a former top Pentagon official, as well as the International Institute of Strategic Studies, London, and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which issued its annual report recently. Secret America arms sales to Iran in 1986 were estimated by one expert to be between SUS 64 million and SUSB7 million ($107.52 million and $146.16 million). The US also has sold civilian helicopters to Iraq, which may or may not have been used in the war. It also has sold Iraq four small jets with military capabilities and several large cargo planes adaptable for carrying troops. Recent Reagan administration efforts to stop the flow of arms have failed, said Cordesman, because its position has been so thoroughly discredited by its own secret arms sales to Iran.

Both sides in the war have both Soviet and American planes, tanks

and ships. For Iran, the biggest supplier is China, contributing about a third of all its material, a top State Department specialist said. Others, he said, are North Korea, Libya, Syria and Vietnam.

Eastern European countries — especially Bulgaria — also are helping Iran, and so far Spain and Portugal have defied American efforts to persuade them to restrain shipments. For Iraq, the Soviet Union is the biggest supplier, funneling many of its supplies through Kuwait, officials said. Cordesman said that Iraq recently received a first shipment of sophisticated Soviet MiG29 fighters and improved versions of the MiG27 and MiG23.

“Iraq is receiving a medium flow now from France,” he said, “and massive amounts of munitions from other sources.” The Russians have changed the pattern of their own support in the war.

In the early years they provided supplies to Iran, apparently believing they could cultivate the Ayatollah Khomeiny and develop Iran as an ally, a State Department official said.

In the last several years, however, the

Russians have shifted their support to Iraq. But while the Russians have been aiding Iraq, many of their communist allies in Eastern Europe have been helping Iran. Making money, not ideology, appears to have been the guiding objective in many cases. Communist and non-communist nations have shared the pursuit of the dollar. A State Department expert said the war has “now bogged down into a World War I type of situation. It is now infantry and artillery that make the difference, not sophisticated weapons — not F--14s, but how many soldiers you can throw across the barriers. “Some countries, for example both West and East Germany, are exporting the technical ability to build plants that can make ammunition — and that is becoming important in the war.”