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Iraq Shipped Banned Missile Engines Out of Country Shortly After War, UNMOVIC Says
The Iraqi Ministry of Trade began shipping scrap metal, including missile engines and equipment that could be used in WMD production, to Jordan and other countries less than three months after the United States and its allies overthrew former President Saddam Hussein, according to a report released yesterday by the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (see GSN, June 10). The report, expected to be presented today to the U.N. Security Council, criticizes “the systematic removal” of items subject to U.N. monitoring from a number of Iraqi sites, the Associated Press reported. Exported items include at least 42 engines from missiles with ranges that exceeded the 150-kilometer limit imposed by the United Nations following the 1991 Gulf War, according to AP. Several Iraqi sites once used to manufacture missiles and precursors for chemical weapons have been destroyed or emptied, according to commercial satellite photographs. Scrap yard managers estimated that 60,000 tons of scrap metal, stainless steel and other alloys passed through Jordan’s largest free trade zone in 2003, followed by an additional 70,000 until June of this year, the report says. U.N. inspectors learned that was “only a small part of all scrap materials exported from Iraq to the other countries that border Iraq and further to Europe, North Africa and Asia,” according to the report. U.N. inspectors said Jordan and the Netherlands, another country where large quantities of the scrap were found, agreed to allow inspectors to observe the destruction of the engines and the other equipment. Nevertheless, 18 SA-2 missile engines, seven high-tech machines that could be used to make missile parts, and other equipment essential to missile production remain missing, according to the report (Edith Lederer, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Sept. 7).
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