Report: Arms entered Iraq through Syrian firm

A firm from Syria, headed by a cousin of that country’s leader, Bashar Assad, signed contracts to supply millions of dollars in arms and equipment to Iraq before the United States invaded in March, The Los Angeles Times reported on Tuesday.

In the first of a two-part series written from Damascus, The Times reported that “1,000 heavy machine guns and up to 20 million bullets for assault rifles,” supplied by SES International Corp., “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.”

Files cited by the Times were taken from the abandoned office of Al Bashair Trading Co., by a reporter for the German magazine Stern shortly after U.S. troops entered Baghdad.

The newspaper said it had the 800 signed contracts translated from Arabic and sought confirmation internationally during a three-month investigation.

Among the findings The Times reported:

— A Polish company shipped up to 380 surface-to-air missile engines to Baghdad through Syria.

— A South Korean firm shipped $8 million in telecommunications equipment for “air defense.”

— A Slovenian firm shipped 20 battle tank barrels to the Syrian firm early in 2002.

— Two North Korean officials went to Damascus to discuss an Iraqi payment of $10 million for components for ballistic missiles.

According to the newspaper, a confidential U.N. report identifies Al Bashair as the biggest of 13 companies used to evade the U.N. arms embargo and other sanctions. Al Bashair made deals for as much as $1 billion a year in the 1990s.

Following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the United Nations imposed a full arms embargo, a trade ban and a freeze on Iraq’s assets and international deal-making. All were violated, including the freeze on assets, when Iraq used false sugar purchases to launder money and divert it to foreign banks.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry did not respond to Times requests for explanations of SES activities. SES sent the newspaper an e-mail saying it was not involved in illicit trade but refusing to address specific cases.