The French Connection
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
ASHINGTON
France, China and Syria all have a common reason for
keeping American and British troops out of Iraq: the
three nations may not want the world to discover that
their nationals have been illicitly supplying Saddam
Hussein with materials used in building long-range
surface-to-surface missiles.
We're not talking about short-range Al Samoud 2
missiles, which Saddam is ostentatiously destroying to
help his protectors avert an invasion, nor his old
mobile Scuds. The delivery system for mass destruction
warheads requires a much more sophisticated propulsion
system and fuels.
If you were running the Iraqi ballistic missiles
project, where in the world would you go to buy the
chemical that is among the best binders for solid
propellant?
Answer: to 116 DaWu Road in Zibo, a city in the
Shandong Province of China, where a company named Qilu
Chemicals is a leading producer of a transparent
liquid rubber named hydroxy terminated polybutadiene,
familiarly known in the advanced-rocket trade as HTPB.
But you wouldn't want the word "chemicals" to appear
anywhere on the purchase because that might alert
inspectors enforcing sanctions, so you employ a couple
of cutouts. One is an import-export company with which
Qilu Chemicals often does business.
To be twice removed from the source, you would turn to
CIS Paris, a Parisian broker that is active in
dealings of many kinds with Baghdad. Its director is
familiar with the order but denies being the agent.
A shipment of 20 tons of HTPB, whose sale to Iraq is
forbidden by U.N. resolutions and the oil-for-food
agreement, left China in August 2002 in a 40-foot
container. It arrived in the Syrian port of Tartus
(fortified by the Knights Templar in 1183, and the
Mediterranean terminus for an Iraqi oil pipeline
today) and was received there by a trading company
that was an intermediary for the Iraqi missile
industry, the end user. The HTPB was then trucked
across Syria to Iraq.
Syria has no sophisticated missile-building program.
What rocket weaponry it has comes off the shelf (and
usually on credit) from Russia, so it therefore has no
use for HTPB. But cash-starved Syria is the conduit
for missile supplies to cash-flush Saddam, as this
shipment demonstrates. We will have to wait until
after the war to find out how much other weaponry, for
what huge fees, Saddam has stored in currently
un-inspectable Syrian warehouses.
The French connection � brokering the deal among the
Chinese producer, the Syrian land transporter and the
Iraqi buyer � is no great secret to the world's arms
merchants. French intelligence has long been aware of
it. The requirement for a French export license as
well as U.N. sanctions approval may have been averted
by disguising it as a direct offshore sale from China
to Syria.
I'm also told that a contract was signed last April in
Paris for five tons of 99 percent unsymmetric
dimethylhydrazine, another advanced missile fuel,
which is produced by France's Soci�t� Nationale des
Poudre et Explosifs. In addition, Iraqi attempts to
buy an oxidizer for solid propellant missiles,
ammonium perchlorate, were successful, at least on
paper. Both chemicals, like HTPB, require explicit
approval by the U.N. Sanctions Committee before they
can be sold to Iraq.
Perhaps a few intrepid members of the Chirac Adoration
Society, formerly known as the French media, will ask
France's lax export-control authorities about these
shipments. U.N. inspectors looking at Iraq's El Sirat
trading company might try to follow its affiliate, the
Gudia Bureau, to dealings in Paris.
Is this account what journalists call a "keeper," one
held back for publication at a critical moment, made
more newsworthy by the Security Council debate? No;
I've been poking around for only about a week,
starting with data originating from an Arab source,
not from the C.I.A. (Anti-Kurdish analysts at Langley
have it in for me for embarrassing them for 18 months
on Al Qaeda's ties to Saddam, especially in the
terrorist Ansar enclave in Iraqi Kurdistan.)
This detail about the France-China-Syria-Iraq
propellant collaboration makes for dull reading, but
reveals some of the motivation behind the campaign of
those nations to suppress the truth. The truth,
however, will out.
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John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tonight I have a message for the brave and oppressed people of Iraq:
Your enemy is not surrounding your country � your enemy is ruling your
country. And the day he and his regime are removed from power will be
the day of your liberation." -George W. Bush 1/29/03
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