es347fan
03-14-2003, 12:54 PM
The French Connection
March 13, 2003
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
WASHINGTON
France, China and Syria all have a common reason for
keeping American and British troops out of Iraq: the three
nations may not want the world to discover that their
nationals have been illicitly supplying Saddam Hussein with
materials used in building long-range surface-to-surface
missiles.
We're not talking about short-range Al Samoud 2 missiles,
which Saddam is ostentatiously destroying to help his
protectors avert an invasion, nor his old mobile Scuds. The
delivery system for mass destruction warheads requires a
much more sophisticated propulsion system and fuels.
If you were running the Iraqi ballistic missiles project,
where in the world would you go to buy the chemical that is
among the best binders for solid propellant?
Answer: to 116 DaWu Road in Zibo, a city in the Shandong
Province of China, where a company named Qilu Chemicals is
a leading producer of a transparent liquid rubber named
hydroxy terminated polybutadiene, familiarly known in the
advanced-rocket trade as HTPB.
But you wouldn't want the word "chemicals" to appear
anywhere on the purchase because that might alert
inspectors enforcing sanctions, so you employ a couple of
cutouts. One is an import-export company with which Qilu
Chemicals often does business.
To be twice removed from the source, you would turn to CIS
Paris, a Parisian broker that is active in dealings of many
kinds with Baghdad. Its director is familiar with the order
but denies being the agent.
A shipment of 20 tons of HTPB, whose sale to Iraq is
forbidden by U.N. resolutions and the oil-for-food
agreement, left China in August 2002 in a 40-foot
container. It arrived in the Syrian port of Tartus
(fortified by the Knights Templar in 1183, and the
Mediterranean terminus for an Iraqi oil pipeline today) and
was received there by a trading company that was an
intermediary for the Iraqi missile industry, the end user.
The HTPB was then trucked across Syria to Iraq.
Syria has no sophisticated missile-building program. What
rocket weaponry it has comes off the shelf (and usually on
credit) from Russia, so it therefore has no use for HTPB.
But cash-starved Syria is the conduit for missile supplies
to cash-flush Saddam, as this shipment demonstrates. We
will have to wait until after the war to find out how much
other weaponry, for what huge fees, Saddam has stored in
currently un-inspectable Syrian warehouses.
The French connection - brokering the deal among the
Chinese producer, the Syrian land transporter and the Iraqi
buyer - is no great secret to the world's arms merchants.
French intelligence has long been aware of it. The
requirement for a French export license as well as U.N.
sanctions approval may have been averted by disguising it
as a direct offshore sale from China to Syria.
I'm also told that a contract was signed last April in
Paris for five tons of 99 percent unsymmetric
dimethylhydrazine, another advanced missile fuel, which is
produced by France's Société Nationale des Poudre et
Explosifs. In addition, Iraqi attempts to buy an oxidizer
for solid propellant missiles, ammonium perchlorate, were
successful, at least on paper. Both chemicals, like HTPB,
require explicit approval by the U.N. Sanctions Committee
before they can be sold to Iraq.
Perhaps a few intrepid members of the Chirac Adoration
Society, formerly known as the French media, will ask
France's lax export-control authorities about these
shipments. U.N. inspectors looking at Iraq's El Sirat
trading company might try to follow its affiliate, the
Gudia Bureau, to dealings in Paris.
Is this account what journalists call a "keeper," one held
back for publication at a critical moment, made more
newsworthy by the Security Council debate? No; I've been
poking around for only about a week, starting with data
originating from an Arab source, not from the C.I.A.
(Anti-Kurdish analysts at Langley have it in for me for
embarrassing them for 18 months on Al Qaeda's ties to
Saddam, especially in the terrorist Ansar enclave in Iraqi
Kurdistan.)
This detail about the France-China-Syria-Iraq propellant
collaboration makes for dull reading, but reveals some of
the motivation behind the campaign of those nations to
suppress the truth. The truth, however, will come out.
March 13, 2003
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
WASHINGTON
France, China and Syria all have a common reason for
keeping American and British troops out of Iraq: the three
nations may not want the world to discover that their
nationals have been illicitly supplying Saddam Hussein with
materials used in building long-range surface-to-surface
missiles.
We're not talking about short-range Al Samoud 2 missiles,
which Saddam is ostentatiously destroying to help his
protectors avert an invasion, nor his old mobile Scuds. The
delivery system for mass destruction warheads requires a
much more sophisticated propulsion system and fuels.
If you were running the Iraqi ballistic missiles project,
where in the world would you go to buy the chemical that is
among the best binders for solid propellant?
Answer: to 116 DaWu Road in Zibo, a city in the Shandong
Province of China, where a company named Qilu Chemicals is
a leading producer of a transparent liquid rubber named
hydroxy terminated polybutadiene, familiarly known in the
advanced-rocket trade as HTPB.
But you wouldn't want the word "chemicals" to appear
anywhere on the purchase because that might alert
inspectors enforcing sanctions, so you employ a couple of
cutouts. One is an import-export company with which Qilu
Chemicals often does business.
To be twice removed from the source, you would turn to CIS
Paris, a Parisian broker that is active in dealings of many
kinds with Baghdad. Its director is familiar with the order
but denies being the agent.
A shipment of 20 tons of HTPB, whose sale to Iraq is
forbidden by U.N. resolutions and the oil-for-food
agreement, left China in August 2002 in a 40-foot
container. It arrived in the Syrian port of Tartus
(fortified by the Knights Templar in 1183, and the
Mediterranean terminus for an Iraqi oil pipeline today) and
was received there by a trading company that was an
intermediary for the Iraqi missile industry, the end user.
The HTPB was then trucked across Syria to Iraq.
Syria has no sophisticated missile-building program. What
rocket weaponry it has comes off the shelf (and usually on
credit) from Russia, so it therefore has no use for HTPB.
But cash-starved Syria is the conduit for missile supplies
to cash-flush Saddam, as this shipment demonstrates. We
will have to wait until after the war to find out how much
other weaponry, for what huge fees, Saddam has stored in
currently un-inspectable Syrian warehouses.
The French connection - brokering the deal among the
Chinese producer, the Syrian land transporter and the Iraqi
buyer - is no great secret to the world's arms merchants.
French intelligence has long been aware of it. The
requirement for a French export license as well as U.N.
sanctions approval may have been averted by disguising it
as a direct offshore sale from China to Syria.
I'm also told that a contract was signed last April in
Paris for five tons of 99 percent unsymmetric
dimethylhydrazine, another advanced missile fuel, which is
produced by France's Société Nationale des Poudre et
Explosifs. In addition, Iraqi attempts to buy an oxidizer
for solid propellant missiles, ammonium perchlorate, were
successful, at least on paper. Both chemicals, like HTPB,
require explicit approval by the U.N. Sanctions Committee
before they can be sold to Iraq.
Perhaps a few intrepid members of the Chirac Adoration
Society, formerly known as the French media, will ask
France's lax export-control authorities about these
shipments. U.N. inspectors looking at Iraq's El Sirat
trading company might try to follow its affiliate, the
Gudia Bureau, to dealings in Paris.
Is this account what journalists call a "keeper," one held
back for publication at a critical moment, made more
newsworthy by the Security Council debate? No; I've been
poking around for only about a week, starting with data
originating from an Arab source, not from the C.I.A.
(Anti-Kurdish analysts at Langley have it in for me for
embarrassing them for 18 months on Al Qaeda's ties to
Saddam, especially in the terrorist Ansar enclave in Iraqi
Kurdistan.)
This detail about the France-China-Syria-Iraq propellant
collaboration makes for dull reading, but reveals some of
the motivation behind the campaign of those nations to
suppress the truth. The truth, however, will come out.