Iraq Arms Sales

Six former high-ranking officials in the Polish government and two Southern California men have been arrested in a U.S. Customs Service sting operation for allegedly trying to sell $96 million worth of arms to Iraq, federal officials said Friday. The alleged international arms ring was uncovered by customs agents posing as front men for the Iraqi government, authorities said.

A retired Army colonel and two other men face charges of trying to sell U.S. military helicopters adapted for spraying chemicals to Iraq. U.S. Customs Service agents posing as prospective buyers of the 34 Bell OH-58As helicopters negotiated a purchase with retired Col. Robert Fairchild, 53, of Little Rock, Ark., and Donald Proven, 56, a former Marine from Chicago, the agency said. The agents believe they were bidding against another buyer, who intended to ship the helicopters to Iraq.

A federal grand jury has indicted six former high-ranking Polish officials, two Orange County men and two others for allegedly trying to sell millions of dollars' worth of MIG fighter planes, assault rifles, grenade launchers and missile systems to Iraq, federal officials said Thursday. In a six-count indictment unsealed in Brooklyn, N.Y., the 10 suspects are charged with conspiracy, dealing in firearms without a license and illegally transferring AK-47 automatic assault rifles, said Andrew J.

Los Angeles defense contractor Teledyne Industries and Chilean arms merchant Carlos Cardoen were indicted Wednesday on charges of violating U.S. arms export laws in the sale of 24,000 cluster bombs to Iraq before the Persian Gulf War. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno personally approved the sweeping charges, despite evidence that U.S. agencies knew Cardoen was manufacturing the bombs for Iraq when Teledyne received export licenses from the U.S. government to sell him a key ingredient in the devices.

Is it a gun? Is it a missile launcher? Is it oil refinery piping? The case of the mysterious "Iraqi supergun" continues to intrigue arms experts and officials in several countries. It involves the reputed assembly from components from various nations of the world's longest-range cannon, constituting a possible nuclear or chemical threat to Israel and involving tips from intelligence agencies and the murder in Brussels of a leading artillery specialist.

The Bush Administration, seeking to strengthen compliance with the global arms and financial embargo against Iraq, Monday made public the names of 52 firms and 37 individuals that it says have acted, or are acting, as agents and fronts for the Baghdad government. The firms and individuals are part of an international operation through which Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein built his war machine and possibly embezzled his nation's wealth, officials charged.

Five days into the nation's first post-Cold War crisis, President Bush has succeeded in implementing a strategy that eluded most of his predecessors--economic warfare. Although the possibility of moving U.S. military forces to the Persian Gulf has attracted a lion's share of public attention, the less dramatic use of economic power is the Bush Administration's chief hope for forcing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to disgorge his conquest of Kuwait, officials say.

During a war-games exercise at the the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., last month, participants were asked to determine the most effective American response to a hypothetical invasion of Kuwait by Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein. Their solution: a surgical air strike designed to decapitate Iraq's heavily armed, 1-million-man war machine by killing the dictator himself. Such a raid--while it would take liberties with a publicly espoused U.S.

The Bush Administration, increasingly convinced that Saddam Hussein will hold onto power even after the rout of his forces, is quietly forging a strategy to prompt a coup in Baghdad by preventing the Iraqi president from rebuilding his shattered economy and offering a brighter future to his war-weary people. Senior U.S.

The Soviet Union called Friday for the withdrawal of U.S. warships from the Persian Gulf to avoid a "serious threat to international peace and security." The call, made in a government statement carried by the official news agency Tass, said that several Soviet warships in the gulf would "have to stay" to escort Soviet merchant vessels there. The statement also said that the Soviet Union wants a prompt end to the Iran-Iraq War in the gulf region, now nearing its seventh anniversary.

For years, Anees Mansour Wadi seemed to live a charmed life. The Iraqi businessman had lavish flats in London, a $3.4-million mansion in Beverly Hills and what appeared to be a blank check from Baghdad. When Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 cast a shadow over Iraqi business connections, Wadi was among 30 Iraqi nationals expelled from Britain.

Three British business executives were cleared Monday of charges that they illegally sold arms-making equipment to Iraq, ending a trial that had raised new questions about the support of Saddam Hussein's regime by Western governments before the Persian Gulf War.

A British intelligence official, testifying from behind a screen, told a London court Friday that details of Iraq's secret arms-buying effort were shared with other Western intelligence agencies as early as 1987. The official, identified only as "Officer B" of the MI5 security service, did not specifically say the CIA received the intelligence reports. However, a U.S.

A federal judge on Thursday threw out the guilty plea of an ex-banker accused of arranging $5 billion in illegal loans to Iraq, clearing the way for a full airing of the evidence in a financial scandal that has focused on the Bush Administration's prewar dealings with Baghdad. U.S. District Judge Marvin H. Shoob accepted a prosecutor's request to withdraw the government's plea bargain with Christopher P.

At the height of a federal investigation into illegal loans to Iraq by Italy's largest bank, the Italian ambassador to the United States pressed then-Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh during a White House luncheon not to indict the bank, according to a document disclosed in federal court Wednesday.

The Justice Department blocked an attempt by federal investigators to travel to Rome to interview senior officials of an Italian bank that financed Iraqi arms purchases, after repeated complaints from the Italian government, according to documents and interviews.

The United States and Soviet Union, moving swiftly in their first joint attempt to end a post-Cold War international crisis, appealed to the world Friday for an across-the-board arms embargo against Iraq and demanded that it cease its "brutal and illegal" invasion of Kuwait. In a dramatic episode showing the new and emerging relationship between the superpowers, Secretary of State James A. Baker III cut short a visit to Mongolia to fly the breadth of the Soviet Union to hammer out a common U.S.

A senior Bush Administration expert on Asia arrived in Beijing on Saturday for a hastily arranged visit aimed primarily at seeking Chinese cooperation in an international arms embargo against Iraq. The official, Assistant Secretary of State Richard H. Solomon, also will brief Chinese officials about the meeting last week in the Siberian city of Irkutsk at which Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A.

State Department documents released Wednesday show that the Bush Administration did not object to U.S. allies selling military goods to Iraq after the end of the Iran-Iraq War and that it considered direct sales of American weapons to Baghdad. Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence S.

Authorities are investigating allegations that Iraq traded grain shipments bought with U.S. government loans for weapons and other military goods, a Bush Administration official confirmed Friday. The disclosure by Alan C. Raul, general counsel at the Agriculture Department, marked the first official acknowledgment that American foodstuffs may have been exchanged for weapons by Iraq.