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