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  • Hugo Chavez and red heat

    Agency WPS
    What the Papers Say. Part B (Russia)
    March 17, 2005, Thursday

    HUGO CHAVEZ AND RED HEAT

    SOURCE: Nezavisimaya Gazeta, March 17, 2005, pp. 1, 4

    Andrei Terekhov, Vladimir Ivanov


    The United States is once again claiming that Russian weapons may end
    up in the wrong hands. General Ben Craddock has expressed concern
    about Russian-Venezuelan cooperation in the military sphere, and
    doubts that 100,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles and other weapons will
    end up in the Venezuelan military. "If Venezuela is importing weapons
    to defend its sovereignty and borders, it is of course free to do so,
    like any other country. If it is exporting instability, then the
    matter is different," Craddock told the Armed Forces Committee of the
    Senate last Tuesday. In fact, Craddock essentially repeated the
    statement the US State Department released in February, the ones
    purporting that weapons from Russia "may have a destabilizing effect"
    on the situation in the region. Craddock made his statement several
    days after the announcement that Moscow was selling 10 helicopters to
    Venezuela. Venezuelan Defense Minister Jorje Louis Garcia Carneiro
    and Sergei Chemezov of Rosoboroneksport signed the contract on March
    10.

    Washington has been raising the matter of Russia's military
    cooperation with Syria and Venezuela for months already. The
    Americans are concerned that Russian weapons may end up in the hands
    of Hezbollah via Syria or Colombian revolutionaries via Venezuela.
    Moscow in its turn claims that it doesn't plan to sell Iglas to Syria
    and that the Strelets complexes whose sale to Damascus is being
    discussed at this point pose no threat to Israel, Washington's ally
    in the region.

    The same goes for Venezuela. Mikhail Troyansky of the Foreign
    Ministry describes Washington's concerns as "artificial and
    groundless." He said: "We explained our position clearly in the
    February 11 memorandum. These suspicions apply to absolutely all
    weapons sold in the international market." Troyansky emphasizes that
    Venezuela's neighbors are not at all concerned about the prospect,
    and that Russia is operating within the framework of the
    international rules for arms exports. "The claims that the arms
    deliveries will destabilize the situation are ridiculous, since
    America is selling many more weapons to some of Venezuela's
    neighbors," Troyansky said.

    In the meantime, new operations of the so-called "Russian mafia" are
    feeding Washington's anxiety. Yesterday, the American media reported
    arrests of 18 members of an international criminal group charged with
    an attempt to smuggle $500,000 worth of military hardware into the
    country. The detainees claim that the weapons they expected from
    Russia allegedly included air defense systems, grenade launchers,
    machine guns, and so on. NY DA David Kelly says that the United
    States is working together with foreign governments to locate the
    shipment. "It seems that we are dealing with people from Eastern
    European military circles," said Kelly.

    Christian Spice of the South African Republic and Arthur Solomonjan
    of Armenia are the main suspects in a case the FBI has been working
    on since last March. According to Solomonjan, the weapons were
    expected by ship from Russia (Chechnya). Spice claims that he has
    contacts with the Russian mafia in New York. In fact, there are even
    the reports that along with the conventional weapons the suspects
    planned to import enriched uranium, allegedly for a dirty bomb. The
    criminal network was exposed by the FBI that infiltrated it and whose
    agent posed as the buyer.

    Vitaly Shlykov formerly of the GRU (army intelligence) maintains that
    control over Russian arms export is somewhat more effective nowadays
    than it was in the 1990s. According to some estimates, more than $1
    billion worth of weapons were illegitimately sold then. Shlykov says
    that these weapons are usually sold again by the countries that buy
    it from Russia openly and legitimately. Unlike America, Russia lacks
    an effective mechanism of monitoring the routes the weapons it is
    selling take. "This is the task that has to be handled by the Foreign
    Ministry," Shlykov explained. "Unfortunately, it doesn't include a
    special intelligence service keeping an eye on the sale of weapons to
    the third countries. The US State Department has a service like
    that."

    Emil Dabagjan of the Latin America Institute at the Russian Academy
    of Sciences says that Washington is annoyed to see that Venezuela,
    which used to buy only American weapons, is looking for alternative
    suppliers. Dabagjan says that even president of Venezuela admits that
    the United States itself would like to sell weapon to Caracas - but
    at a higher price.

    Translated by A. Ignatkin
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