By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 25, 2008; A12
The State Department has slapped financial sanctions on Russia's state arms exporter for its dealings with Iran, but in an unusual move, it granted the company a partial waiver to permit the sale of nearly two dozen Russian helicopters to Iraq, U.S. officials said yesterday.
The new sanctions -- required by U.S. law to thwart the sale of sensitive technology that could help Iran, North Korea and Syria develop weapons of mass destruction or missile systems -- were also imposed on 12 other companies or organizations based in China, Iran, North Korea, South Korea, Sudan, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov denounced the sanctions on Russia's Rosoboronexport, and its subsidiaries, as illegal and unjust. The company had been sanctioned by the United States in 2006 but would have come off the list had the State Department determined that it had not made any suspect sales in the past two years.
"These new sanctions were introduced without any international legal foundation whatsoever," Lavrov said in Moscow. "Russia will of course take this into account in practical affairs and relations with the United States, such as in trade and economic and other spheres."
He added that Russia would not change its policies on Iran because of the sanctions. "All our trade and all of our military-technical cooperation with Iran is carried out in strict accordance with current international legal norms," he said. "There can be no other explanation here than the rather arrogant extra-territorial implementation of American laws."
Continue reading "Russian Arms Exporter Sanctioned Over Iran" »
Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2008
By Vivienne Walt /
Paris
Need to start a war?
No problem. While stock markets gyrate and financial institutions (and even
whole countries, like Iceland) teeter on bankruptcy, one global industry is still drawing plenty of
high-end trades and profits: weapons.
In a Paris courtroom
last week, 42 officials went on trial for taking millions in kickbacks and
organizing huge arms commissions from the Angolan government during the
mid-1990s. In the dock were such big names as Charles Pasqua, a former
French Interior Minister; Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, the son of the late
French President François Mitterrand; and Russian-Israeli billionaire Arkadi
Gaydamak, who is currently a candidate for mayor of Jerusalem. The group is
charged with having supplied almost $800 million worth of arms to Angolan
President José Eduardo Dos Santos, including 12 helicopters, 6 naval vessels,
150,000 shells and 170,000 land mines.
The hardware came
from the huge stockpiles of Soviet weapons left behind when the Soviet Union
collapsed, and Dos Santos wanted it in order to crush the U.S.-backed Unita
rebels during Angola's devastating civil war. (Dos Santos, who is believed to
have made millions off the trades, won the war and is still in power.) The
French businessman Pierre Falcone allegedly plied Angolan officials with tens
of millions of dollars — some of it stuffed in suitcases — and deposited other
sums of money in offshore accounts. Actor Nicolas Cage's character in the 2005
movie Lord of War was
partly modeled on the alleged actions of Gaydamak, although the character may also
have been inspired by the powerful Russian arms trader Viktor Bout, who is
currently in a Thai jail awaiting the outcome of a hearing on a U.S.
extradition request.
Continue reading "The Arms Trade Booms Amid Global Economic Woes" »