| |
Russian's little
secrets
By Valentinas Mite
PRAGUE - As people sift through the rubble of
the many government buildings that were bombed during
the attacks on Baghdad, there is growing speculation on
what documents will be found in the government's
archives.
Some reports say that Russia, more
than most, may have something to worry about. Moscow had
close contacts with the Iraqi government under Saddam
Hussein and never made a secret of it. Some have even
suspected the Russians of concluding deals that violated
UN sanctions against the country imposed after the 1991
Gulf War.
It's not clear what the archives will
reveal - if anything at all. It's still too soon to say.
But the issue has set off heated debate among analysts.
Dimitrij Orlov is deputy general director of the
Moscow-based Center of Political Technologies. He
acknowledges that Russia - and before that the Soviet
Union - had cultivated close ties to Iraq and other
countries in the Middle East. He says, however, that
Russia abided to the strict UN framework and there is
little possibility that compromising documents will be
found.
"Of course, the USSR was interested in
creating outposts of its influence in the Middle East.
It cooperated very actively with special services of the
Iraqi regime, the regime of Saddam Hussein. Let's say,
it is not a secret that Evgenij Primakov [former
high-ranking KGB officer, Russian prime minister in
1998] was very actively involved in these activities.
However, there is nothing unique. The battle of
different interests was under way there and this battle
is still under way now," Orlov said.
He says,
instead, that other governments may have cause for
concern, including the United States. He says that Iraq
and its ruling Ba'ath Party had cultivated close ties
with officials around the world. "I am convinced that
there are many documents that are still secret [in Iraqi
archives] - details of cooperation between many other
countries and Iraq, and the links that [Saddam's] Ba'ath
Party had in the world - all this is very interesting
for Russian special services and for special services of
many other countries. I think that now there goes a very
tense fight for the access to these archives," Orlov
said.
Well-known Russian defense analyst Pavel
Felgenhauer disagrees. He said that Russia's opposition
to the war in Iraq may have been fueled not only by
political considerations but also by fears that the real
extent of Russian cooperation with Saddam's regime would
be disclosed. He tells RFE/RL that a source in the
Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, whom he declines to
identify, says that the Russian military actively and
illegally cooperated with the Saddam regime.
And, he said, this type of cooperation will be
impossible to hide: "It is impossible to destroy all
evidence in any country, especially in such a
bureaucratic country, as was Iraq ruled by the Ba'ath
Party, when the archives were not in one location. I
mean, there are many state agencies there [in Iraq] and
a deal is usually reflected in many archives. This
happened after the fall of communist regimes and in
Eastern Germany, where attempts to destroy the archives
led nowhere. Always, a track is left. Some copy was sent
to some place, in some other place there are checks.
Some [documents] are in the archives in the Ministry of
Finance, others are in party archives, some are in the
archives of intelligence services archives, some are in
are military [archives]. You cannot destroy everything."
Anecdotal evidence of such military cooperation
is already starting to emerge from Iraq. Our
correspondent reported this week that US soldiers found
a letter in Baghdad from a Russian weapons firm,
apparently signed by Russian Colonel General Vladislav
Achalov, offering to sell millions of dollars' worth of
conventional arms. The letter, dated July 2001 and
written in English, is signed by Achalov, who identifies
himself as a representative of a Moscow-based company,
FTW Systems Ltd. The authenticity of the letter could
not be immediately confirmed.
Bobo Lo, an
associate fellow at the Royal Institute of International
affairs in London, said that he could not believe these
types of allegations: "To break these rules and
conventions and sanctions regime would be not [only]
anti-Western, but it would be to flout the authority of
the UN and that's something [Russia has] prided itself
in not doing - in contrast for example to the United
States. It has always seen itself as a good
international citizen that observes the rules of the UN.
And I don't think it would do that. I mean it's possible
that you could have rogue elements, you could never rule
anything out, but I would be very, very surprised if the
Russian government, even on quasi-official basis, was
involved in breaking the UN sanctions regime."
Lo says that it is possible that Russian
military technology could have reached Iraq indirectly
through such countries as Ukraine and Belarus. However,
he says that these types of deals would be verbal, with
nothing written down.
Copyright (c) 2002,
RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington DC
20036
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
