WASHINGTON — The Kuwaiti and Saudi Arabian monarchies shipped U.S. missiles and bombs to the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war without American approval, according to a classified report prepared by congressional investigators.
Kuwait, which was invaded by Iraq two years ago, provided the Iraqis with an undisclosed number of TOW anti-tank missiles and the Saudis sent Baghdad as many as 1,500 bombs, according to intelligence reports cited in the report by the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress.
Other U.S. arms may have been transferred to Iraq by Persian Gulf states during the eight-year war, which ended in August, 1988, but the GAO investigation was stymied by the refusal of the Bush Administration to press for information from U.S. allies in the region, according to a copy of the GAO report obtained Friday by The Times.
The GAO report confirms an earlier story in The Times about the Saudi transfer and suggests that Saudi authorities may have misled U.S. officials about the number of bombs provided to Iraq. It also raises questions about the accuracy of the required notification the Ronald Reagan Administration later provided to Congress on the Saudi transfer.
The report sheds more light on the covert efforts of U.S. allies to help Iraq during this pivotal period, when fears were mounting that Iran was on the brink of victory. The Reagan Administration, though secretly tilting toward the Hussein regime to bolster its military position, was having great difficulty keeping track of what other nations were doing, even with U.S.-supplied weaponry.
The Bush Administration has admitted there were some abuses but has characterized them as relatively minor and inadvertent. However, critics have suggested U.S. officials were deliberately looking the other way while illegal shipments occurred to avoid having to notify Congress and then justify the transfers.
Although the State Department protested the Kuwaiti shipment, the Reagan Administration made no effort to recover either the sophisticated anti-tank missiles or the bombs provided by the Saudis.
The GAO report provides new details and insights on the unauthorized arms shipments but does not answer the fundamental question about how they occurred.
By directly questioning the veracity of a key American ally, the report could complicate the plans announced Friday by President Bush to sell sophisticated new F-15 jet fighters to the Saudis.
