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A
POLEMIC
Germany's leading role in arming
Iraq
By Marc Erikson
Expurgated portions of Iraq's December 7 report
to the UN Security Council show that German firms made
up the bulk of suppliers for Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction programs. What's galling is that German
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and his minions have long
known the facts, German intelligence services know them
and have loads of information on what Saddam Hussein is
hiding, and Schroeder nonetheless plays holier than thou
to an easily manipulated, pacifist-inclined domestic
audience.
If it's not the height of hypocrisy
and opportunism, Schroeder's preemptive "no war. period"
stance on Iraq and insistence on a "German Way"
(Deutscher Weg) certainly come close. German Way?
Haven't we heard that sort of talk before sometime,
somewhere? But leave that be. It falls in the same
category as Schroeder's former justice minister's
comparison of US President George W Bush to Adolf Hitler
in last summer's election campaign. Not only Schroeder
and that unfortunate lady, but politicians elsewhere are
of limited mental accountability when desperate about
winning an election, and suffer lapses of speech and
memory.
In 1991, Iraq fired dozens of Scud
missiles at Israel and threatened to arm the missiles
with poison-gas and biological warheads. Most of the
contents of those warheads were made in Germany or made
with the aid of German engineers and technology. In
light of German history, can Herr Schroeder countenance
the possibility of a future poison gas attack on Israel
(or anyone else) facilitated by German know-how?
Schroeder may not want to go to war. So be it. But he
should regard it as his most solemn obligation to do his
absolute damnedest to make sure that in the future "good
Germans" don't once again stand there and say: "We
didn't know."
Friedbert Pflueger, foreign policy
spokesman of the main opposition Christian Democratic
parties and an embittered critic of Schroeder's and
Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer's Iraq policy, last
Thursday accused the red-green coalition government of
deliberately keeping the German and world public
uninformed of BND (German foreign intelligence service)
evidence and assessments on the continued existence of
Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). "If we trust
our [intelligence] services, and I do, then we know that
there exist weapons of mass destruction in Iraq," said
Pflueger, and referred to a November 13, 2002, BND
briefing of members of parliament's foreign affairs
committee in which relevant information was disclosed.
As a member of parliament, added Pflueger, he was bound
by his secrecy oath not to pass on such information, but
challenged Schroeder to make it public forthwith. This
was necessary, he said, "so that Herr Schroeder cannot
continue to spread the impression that the existence of
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is a figment of
George W Bush's imagination". He said further that he
would dearly like to know exactly how many different
types of smallpox virus were in Iraq's possession as -
during a November 13 budget committee meeting - Health
Minister Ulla Schmidt had motivated her request for a
several million euro allocation for the purchase of
smallpox vaccine with reference to such Iraqi stocks.
Well, Gerhard, why's your minister worried? Or do
vaccine purchases fall into the category of economic
stimulus for the pharmaceutical industry?
The
reason the BND is well-informed of Iraqi WMD programs -
nuclear, biological and chemical - is straightforward:
since the early 1980s, it has monitored German exports
of dual-use nuclear technologies, precursor chemicals
for poison-gas weapons, and "pharmaceutical" products
and equipment for biological weapons manufacture to the
Middle East. Indeed, there are strong suspicions that it
was a silent partner in a Hamburg front company, Water
Engineering Trading or WET, which covered for and
facilitated such exports. Chief UN weapons inspector
Hans Blix said in his January 27 report that tons of
Iraqi chemical and biological agents and precursors were
unaccounted for. Over the years, well over half of the
precursor materials and a majority of the tools and
know-how for their conversion into weapons were sold to
Iraq by German firms - both prior to and after the 1991
Gulf War. The BND has the details.
In the summer
of 1994, the BND conducted a major study to estimate the
magnitude of the - as at that time - still undeclared
and concealed Iraqi WMD arsenal, relying on sales
records in its possession of post-Gulf War German,
Austrian, and Swiss exports of technologies, sub-systems
and strategic materials to Iraq. It concluded that these
exports pointed to several specific weapons programs,
ranging from ballistic missile upgrades to poison gas
manufacture, which Iraq had not declared and UN
inspectors were unaware of and hence, not surprisingly,
had failed to discover. While the magnitude of the
current (1994) Iraqi weapons program "is difficult to
assess", said the BND, there is no doubt that "some of
the material and equipment" has eluded discovery and
certain projects "are being revived and run
clandestinely".
In February 2001, the BND
compiled a further report and intelligence chief August
Hanning told Spiegel magazine that, "Since the end of
the UN inspections [December 1998], we have determined a
jump in procurement efforts by Iraq," adding that Saddam
was rebuilding destroyed weapons facilities "partly
based on the German industrial standard".
According to the report:
Iraq has resumed its nuclear program and may be
capable of producing an atomic bomb in three years;
Iraq is developing its Al Samoud and Ababil 100/Al
Fatah short-range rockets, which can deliver a 300kg
payload 150km. Medium-range rockets capable of carrying
a warhead 3,000km could be built by 2005 - far enough to
reach Europe;
Iraq is capable of manufacturing solid rocket
fuel;
A Delhi-based company, blacklisted by the German
government because of its alleged role in weapons
proliferation, has acted as a buyer on Iraq's behalf.
Deliveries have been made via Malaysia and Dubai. Indian
companies have copied German machine tools down to the
smallest detail and such equipment has been installed in
numerous chemicals projects. [Note that such Indian
cooperation with Iraq is something of a tradition:
during the Iran-Iraq war India delivered precursors for
warfare agents to Iraq - and later was found to have
delivered quantities of the same materials to Iran.
Baghdad's middleman at the time, an Iraqi with a German
passport, founded a company in Singapore expressly for
this purpose.]
Since the departure of the UN inspectors, the number
of Iraqi sites involved in chemicals production has
increased from 20 to 80. Of that total, a quarter could
be involved in weapons production.
The BND's
warnings didn't stop with that report. In April 2001,
Hanning told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper that Iraq was
developing a new class of chemical weapons, reiterated
his alert on Iraq's missile and nuclear programs, and
said that several German companies had continued to
deliver to Baghdad components needed for the production
of poison gas. In March 2002, he told the New Yorker
magazine that, "It is our estimate that Iraq will have
an atomic bomb in three years." The German opposition
parties' demand that the government make public what it
knows is thus no irresponsible, idle, politically
inspired chatter as the ruling Social Democrats and
Greens charge. The irresponsible chatter and politicking
is Herr Schroeder's.
Houston, Texas, attorney
Gary Pitts announced late last December that his firm,
Pitts and Associates, would soon launch a class action
suit on behalf of more than 3,000 sick Gulf War veterans
against dozens of European companies accused of helping
arm Iraq with weapons of mass destruction. Pitts said he
had received a list of 56 international suppliers of
equipment and raw materials necessary to make sarin, VX,
mustard gas and other chemical agents from the Iraqi
government. The list, brought back from Iraq by former
weapons inspector Scott Ritter last September, proves
identical to one included in a 1998 Iraqi chemical
weapons declaration to the UN, resubmitted unchanged on
December 7 and withheld from publication by the
inspectors - along with other items - for reasons of
"sensitivity". Withheld as well is a list of Iraqi
nuclear technology suppliers originally contained in a
1996 declaration and also resubmitted on December 7.
That nuclear weapons production details on uranium
enrichment, detonation, implosion testing and warhead
construction contained in Iraq's declarations should be
withheld from all but the five permanent UN Security
Council members may have some justification. That lists
of suppliers for nuclear, chemical and biological
weapons components are being withheld makes sense only
if the UN inspectors want to save supplier countries and
firms from embarrassment - precisely the embarrassment
they should be exposed to to forestall future
deliveries.
The list in Iraq's 1998/current
chemical weapons declaration contains 31 "major
suppliers", 14 from Germany. The 1996/current nuclear
suppliers list has 62 company names on it, 33 from
Germany. As Iraq claims that since 1991 it has not
engaged in WMD production, the lists name no post-Gulf
War suppliers. Call it old news. So much the sillier
that the UN refuses to make them public. But since the
BND claims that deliveries did not stop at the end of
the Gulf War as well as simply as a matter of record of
German complicity in arming Iraq, the issue remains an
urgent current concern.
Leading the honor roll
of chemical agents and production equipment suppliers
(in this case nerve gas precursors and manufacturing) to
Iraq is the German firm Preussag, now a subsidiary of
Europe's largest travel agent and tour operator TUI -
happy holidays! And Preussag has long been a firm dear
to Schroeder's heart. In early 1998, when Schroeder was
running for re-election as prime minister of the state
of Lower Saxony which he had governed for eight years,
he had the state buy 51 percent of Preussag's troubled
steel division to the tune of US$500 million, claiming
that 12,000 jobs were at stake. It was a characteristic
Schroeder move: he knew that the Social Democrats would
appoint him chancellor's candidate if he won in Lower
Saxony. Win he did - first in Hannover, later in 1998 at
the federal level to become chancellor. What did he know
about the Preussag conglomerate's Iraq poison gas
dealings? Don't ask.
Included on the Iraqi
suppliers' lists are other world-renowned (eg, Hoechst,
Daimler-Benz, Siemens, Kloeckner, Carl Zeiss, Schott
Glas, etc) and smaller German firms. Notable are Karl
Kolb/Pilot Plant and WTB (Walter Thosti Boswau) who
built and equipped Iraq's two major "pesticide and
detergent" plants which, said a WTB employee, produce
"detergents to exterminate two-legged flies" (Spiegel
4/1989, p 24). The WTB undertaking was supported by a
credit guarantee for several hundred million German
marks by Hermes, a German government export and credit
insurer. Noteworthy also is Rhein-Bayern, which supplied
Iraq with eight mobile toxicological labs housed in
sand-colored, camouflage-painted Magirus trucks.
Chemical agents? Biological agents? Machine
tools and parts and materials for uranium enrichment and
missile production? You name them and the Germans
delivered them - and not only that: they supplied the
plants and know-how for Iraq to make its own
"pesticides" ("to protect the date harvest"), "vaccines"
("to eradicate smallpox and other contagious diseases"),
and "x-ray machines".
Karl Kolb told
investigative reporters following up the Pitts and
Associates law suit that it has done business with Iraq
for 35 years, but had no connection to its weapons
programs. Preussag claimed that accusations it had
supplied precursor chemicals for Iraqi weapons were
untrue. Schott Glas said it was "a manufacturer of glass
and glass components, not of weapons".
If Herr
Schroeder had his way, one assumes, then that's where
things would end. Happily, with some nasty American
trial lawyers on the case, that's unlikely. And happily,
though he tried once more in advance of last Sunday's
state elections in Lower Saxony and Hesse to rally
Germans to his party's cause with anti-Iraq war
rhetoric, Schroeder was dealt a humiliating defeat in
both states. He should have bought re-privatized
Preussag once again. Even the most gullible of German
voters saw through his miserable Iraq-war ploy this time
around, blamed him for over 10 percent unemployment, and
threw his candidates and party into the trash bin.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights
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