von Joachim Gruber
Informationen aus
Information on
- Germany's Proliferation
- Monitoring Problems
- Proliferation Security Initiative & more
- >Iraq - Irak
- Proliferationof weapons technology to Iraq
- Confidence Building Measures
- Dual-use items and the lack of Germany's accountability
- Post-war Iraq aid
- What Kay Found
- S. Ritter:
- R. Butler:
- M. Ignatieff: Status of world politics towards Iraq
- Iran
- US/German Gap
Excerpts of a Talk given at Stanford University, Nov. 20, 1984
Weiterverbreitung von Technologie für Massenvernichtungswaffen aus Deutschland
"... for the higher danger fuel commodities, plutonium and highly enriched uranium, the system's gatekeepers are four of the de jure nuclear states - the US, France, China, USSR/Russia - plus a single non-weapon state, West Germany/Germany."
"The network for higher danger reactors in 1985 - 89 has two clusters - one supplied by West Germany and one supplied by France."
"Enrichment equipment and plants for 1985-89 is a Hub-and-Spoke split between a Supply-Hub sub-network and a Demand-Hub sub-network. The Supply-Hub cluster is centered by West Germany." (see above figure. Uranium based nuclear weapons need enriched uranium.)
Excerpts from: Hunt Morstein J and Perry WD, Commercial Nuclear Trading Networks as Indicators of Nuclear Weapons Intentions, Nonproliferation Review, Fall-Winter 2000, pages 85, 86.
There have been traditionally strong industrial ties between Germany and Iraq (see also: Deutsche Hilfe für Schurkenstaaten). Since the beginning of the UN Oil-For-Food program, Germany has been one of the most significant representatives of the big industrialized countries in Iraq, leading before France, Denmark, Belgium and Italy (source: Internationaler Messe- und Ausstellungsdienst, Messe München, Germany, Baghdad International Fair, Germany's contribution in 2001).
Before the first Gulf War, 109 German companies have contributed to Iraq's armament (example).
- more than 50 % of Iraqi imports came from German companies (trade volume behind it, German-Iraqi trade, Source: Financial Times Deutschland, internal link) - as compared to 0.3 % ($0.1 billion of a total of $33 billion) for the post-war reconstruction of Iraq,
- Switzerland follows with 8 %, then
- France and Italy with 4 % each.
"... [W]e have found people, technical information and illicit procurement networks that if allowed to flow to other countries and regions could accelerate global proliferation."Of related interest: CNN DIPLOMATIC LICENSE, Antiiwar Animation
(Statement by David Kay On The Interim Progress Report On The Activities Of The Iraq Survey Group (Isg) Before The House Permanent Select Committee On Intelligence, The House Committee On Appropriations, Subcommittee On Defense, And The Senate Select Committee On Intelligence, October 2, 2003)"... German and French companies will be mainly to blame. In the 1980's, the German firm Karl Kolb and the French firm Protec combined to furnish millions of dollars' worth of sensitive equipment to six separate plants for making mustard gas and nerve agents, with a capacity of hundreds of tons of nerve agent per year. These companies had to know what the specialized glass-lined vessels they peddled were to be used for. It is insufferable that, like Pontius Pilate, Germany and France now wash their hands of the whole affair, and even chastise others for cleaning up the mess their companies helped create.
...
The Germans were only too happy to provide what was needed to make the missiles more lethal. From the German firm Thyssen came 35 turbopumps to enhance their rocket engines; from the firms BP, Carl Zeiss, Degussa and Tesa came training in wind tunnels and missile electronics; and from the electronics giant Siemens came switching devices and electrical systems to control missile fuel production. Not to be left out, Britain's Matrix Churchill Ltd. (in which the Iraqis had a controlling interest) supplied sensitive machine tools, Britain's TMG Engineering served as a front company for missile procurement, and U.S. defense contractor Litton Industries bankrolled the German firm that built Iraq's main missile production complex."
(G. Milhollin, Director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, Washington, DC 20006, U.S.A., and K. Motz, Associate Director, Wisconsin Project, A Vile Business, Iraq Watch Bulletin, Volume 2, Issue 2, March-April 2003 and The Wall Street Journal, March 24, 2003, pp. A16).
In order for that to become the past, the German public, research and politics have to enter into a candid and informed discussion with German industry. Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader Angela Merkel must have been informed during her visit to the U.S. about what we could do here. Her recent appeal to us comes late and must -unfortunately for Germany- be called courageous. But she as well as her party critics remain silent on this issue.
Until 1992, Germany's manufacturers did not fully comply with UN Iraq embargo and German export laws. For details regarding Iraqi procurement for nuclear, missile, and chemical weapon programs see
- Bill of Indictment by the district court in Augsburg, Germany, 1992
- in particular pages 5 -14,
- CNS Summary.
- Commercial Nuclear Trading Networks as Indicators of Nuclear Weapons Intentions (Table 1, Figures 2 - 4)
The Problem of Proliferation
Techniques for targeting breaches of nonproliferation treaties exist.Source of the compilation of German illegal activities is the CNS Database of the CNS SPECIAL COLLECTION ON THE IRAQ CRISIS, as excerpted in their "Iraqi Nuclear Abstracts" and "Iraqi Missile Abstracts", published by The Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies, California, USA.
The analysis presented here gives background material related to the dangers connected with proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or of the corresponding technology.
This compilation is a follow-up of an activity in 1977 against the financial support provided by the German government. At that time the government had provided financial securities to German companies, amongst them Interatom, a subsidiary of the Siemens AG, to enable the sale of the complete nuclear fuel cycle to Brazil when Brazil was pursuing the path to nuclear explosives. At the same time Germany also sold nuclear equipment to Argentina, Brazil's rival. The South American continent was then -and still is today- nuclear weapons free.
Some of my Links on The Iraq Problem (more)
- American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) Iraq Page
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace - Reconstructing Iraq
- Center For Nonproliferation Studies
- Hunt Morstein J and Perry WD, Commercial Nuclear Trading Networks as Indicators of Nuclear Weapons IntentionsNonproliferation Review, Fall-Winter 2000
- Iraq Special Collection
- Foreign Suppliers to Iraq's Biological Weapons Program
- Ballistic, Cruise Missile, and Missile Defense Systems: Trade and Significant Developments, July-October 1995, Page 12: "A U.N. official asserts that firms in Europe, including Germany, are among the suppliers of missile-related technologies and materials to Iraq. According to U.N. officials, these materials could be utilized in the production of both short- and medium-range missiles."
- Fresh Air
- "Jane Mayer on Halliburton and Dick Cheney", Febr. 19, 2004
- Former White House Adviser Richard Clarke
- with National Public Radio, March 24, 2004.
- Newsweek
- Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas "Storm Warnings", Newsweek, March 25, 2004:
- Evan Thomas, Michael Isikoff and Tamara Lipper "The Insider", Newsweek, April 1, 2004:
- Seymoure M. Hersh "THE DEAL: Why is Washington going easy on Pakistan's nuclear black marketers?", The New Yorker, Fact, March 7, 2004
- Pakistan: the worst nuclear-arms proliferator in the world (see also: Khan's Bomb Offer to Saddam's Iraq: Document Showing Iraq's Interest in Nuclear Weapon Design, April 1, 2010, Project AB (in cache, more in David Albright, "Peddling Peril", chapter 4, Free Press, 2010))
- Iran: enough enriched uranium for a bomb?
- Libya as the war on Iraq drew near: Surrender now and hope they accept your surrender.
- IAEA: If we stay focussed on the declared, we miss the nuclear supply matrix.
- Institute for Policy Studies
- UNDERSTANDING THE U.S.-IRAQ CRISIS: A Primer by Phyllis Bennis, January 2003.
- Iraq Watch
- Press Release, About Iraq Watch,
- The Goods Review List, unofficial list of goods allowed for import into Iraq under the UN Oil-For-Food Program, accompanying Resolution 1409 (21 May 2002).
- Search.
"The CNS Database is the most comprehensive open-source, nonproprietary database related to proliferation issues"
- M"ayer is a staff writer for The
New Yorker. She talks about Vice President Dick Cheney and Halliburton,
the company where Cheney served as chief executive for five years. Halliburton
is the world's largest oil-and-gas-services company, and is now the biggest
private contractor for American forces in Iraq. Mayer's article "Contract
Sport: What Did the Vice-President do for Halliburton?" is in the current
issue of the magazine" (Feb. 16 and Feb. 23 issues).
"Clarke is the former national coordinator for security, infrastructure protection and counterterrorism. He held the position in President Clinton's administration and continued for President Bush. He resigned in March 2003. His new book is "Against All Enemies: Inside Americaâs War on Terror". In the book he criticizes the Bush administration for failing to heed warnings about al Qaeda before Sept. 11, and for invading Iraq without evidence of a connection to al Qaeda. Clarke also worked for the Reagan Administration and the first Bush administration." (Of related interest: "TESTIMONY OF RICHARD A. CLARKE Before The National Commission On Terrorist Attacks Upon The United States, March 24, 2004")
- "... Clarke portrays the Bush White
House as indifferent to the Qaeda threat before 9/11, then obsessed with
punishing Iraq, regardless of what the evidence showed about Saddam's Qaeda
ties, or lack of them. ..."
- "... In the freewheeling Clinton
White House, he was everywhere. Wary of the CIA, Clinton often skipped
the president's morning intelligence briefing. He got his intelligence
instead from Clarke, who collected it from the various spy agencies. Clarke
was not a "principal" on the National Security Council, but he might as
well have been, wandering into top-level meetings and even the Oval Office..."
As for the assassination of Osama
ben Laden: "Both Tenet and Berger are cautious, bureaucratic creatures,
well versed in the perils of the Washington scandal machine. Bureaucrats,
especially those in insular places like the CIA, have long institutional
memories. "For many years," Clarke testified last week, the top officials
of the CIA's Directorate of Operations "were roundly criticized by the
Congress and the media for various covert actions that they carried out
at the request of people like me in the White House -not me, but people
like me." Covert actions -äespecially anything as drastic as assassinationä
-was likely to "blow up in their face," said Clarke."
"... If Western powers sell the means to make horrific weapons, war is going to be the price we pay. Without a change in our export behavior, we will have to send our soldiers somewhere else to disarm another tyrant. Wouldn't it be cheaper - and more humane - not to create the problem in the first place? " (G. Milhollin, K. Motz, A Vile Business, Iraq Watch Bulletin 2, Issue 2, March-April 2003 and The Wall Street Journal, March 24, 2003, pp. A16)
" ... Before the Iraq war, chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said Iraq might still possess 10,000 liters of anthrax and 15 times the amount of gaseous gangrene-causing agent that it had declared to the inspectors. Both these deadly items would still be viable today if properly stored. Blix also pointed to new evidence that Iraq could have 6,500 more chemical weapon warheads than previously thought.
And let's not forget that when U.N.
inspectors left Iraq in 1998, they had compiled a frightening catalog of
Iraq's undeclared poison gas, including almost four tons of missing VX,
the deadliest form of nerve gas, and at least 600 tons of ingredients to
make more of it. Also unaccounted for were up to 3,000 tons of other agents
like tabun, sarin and mustard gas, about 550 artillery shells filled with
mustard gas and about 31,000 chemical munitions, both filled and empty.
"(V. Lincy and K. Motz, We
Still Face the Menace of Iraq's Hidden Horrors, The Los Angeles Times,
May 22, 2003, p. A13)