The Belgrade-Baghdad Axis

The Belgrade-Baghdad Axis


Serbia is the hub for East European arms smugglers and military experts who have been supplying Saddam Hussein with crucial equipment and know-how to help him frustrate a US air campaign against Iraq.
Senior Western officials and regional analysts say that Serbia is the centre of the illicit trade which involves at least seven countries in the Balkans and former Soviet Eastern Europe.
The trade has been going on for some time, and has even increased since the toppling of Slobodan Milošević, a Saddam ally, in 2000.


An investigation by the International Crisis Group
think-tank into the arms-for-Iraq scam concludes that Jugoimport (Ex-Yugoslavia’s state-owned arms export company) the Belgrade-based FRY state arms export agency accused by the US on 2002, also brokered arms to Iraq from Bosnia, Ukraine, Russia, FYROM (Macedonia) and Belarus’.


Despite claims by senior Serbian officials, including President Vojislav Koštunica, that they knew nothing of the trade, documents seen by The Guardian show that the Koštunica administration was warned in January 2002 by its foreign ministry of the damage being done by its trading with Iraq.

The Koštunica cabinet then voted to continue with the clandestine deals.
‘According to diplomatic sources, the pace of arms sales to Iraq may have increased during 2002’ concludes the ICG report.
A senior Western official told the Guardian: “Just about every defence company in [ Serbia] sold to Iraq via Syria or via third countries.”


On 2002, acting on a tip-off from US intelligence, the Croatian authorities seized 14 steel containers from the freighter Boka Star. Inside the barrels and crates labelled ‘active carbon’ and ‘filter inserts for water purification’ were some 208 tonnes of nitrocellulose propellant and nitroglycerine, compounds that could be used for Iraq's dwindling arsenal of Scud missiles.
‘This material has a wide range of uses in military industry, primarily as fuel for artillery and rockets,’ says Dejan Sakić, a Croatian investigator with the Boka Star case. The rocket fuel cargo originated from the Prva Iskra munitions plant outside Belgrade, claim investigators, and was bound for Iraq via Syria from the Montenegrin port of Bar.


A team of US investigators arrived in Serbia to inspect suspect defence plants. They scoured the Sloboda munitions plant in Čačak, southern Serbia, a town which, according to the ICG, has been offering a ‘cash-and-carry’ service for Iraqi arms buyers.


Under Western pressure, recently Belgrade “has shut” the Baghdad office of Jugoimport (Ex-Yugoslavia’s state-owned arms export company), the pivot of the Balkan arms trade and dubbed a ‘state-within-a-state’ in FRY But key figures remain in place, including Borisa Vuković, a former Serbian foreign trade minister who fled to Baghdad in October 2000 when Mr Milošević was ousted. He is seen as the middleman and is said to be a close friend of President Saddam's son Uday.

The ICG investigation also claims that allies of Mr Koštunica visited Baghdad on 2002 year for a conference devoted to attacking US policy in the Balkans and the Middle East.
The document, obtained by the ICG and seen by The Guardian, said Serbia had more than £380m worth of military contracts with states embargoed by the UN!!

Serbia had gain more than £75m worth of business with Iraq!!
Serb military experts have been helping Baghdad upgrade aircraft, supplying rocket fuel for Iraqi Scud missiles, and transferring technology for guidance systems.
The co-operation with Iraq have included television guidance systems for the SA2 and SA6 surface-to-air missiles, used against Nato aircraft in the Balkans.
The illegal arms trade was exposed when Nato troops stormed the offices of the Orao (Eagle) company, a Bosnian-Serb jet engine plant in Bijeljina. Among the documents seized was a letter from the Baghdad office of Jugoimport (Ex-Yugoslavia’s state-owned arms export company), regarding a £6 million deal for the overhaul of Iraqi MiG21 and MiG23 jet fighters by Serb technicians.
The documents also instructed the Iraqis on how to conceal the shipments from inspectors.
At least 2 senior University of Belgrade professors have admitted instructing Iraq on missile guidance systems.
Djordje Blagojevic, who teaches aerodynamics, told Blic newspaper that he taught in Baghdad. Another professor said that the department was working on the development of a cruise missile with a 900-mile range.

Another fact is that among the students in Belgrade are 30 Libyans scientists.
Infact Serbia had gain more than £65m worth with Libya!
Serb experts had help Colonel Gaddafi, of Libya, to acquire a missile capable of hitting Israel in contravention of an international agreement banning the proliferation of missile technology. In a confidential complaint sent to senior Serbian officials on 2002, it has evidence that 3 Serbian firms have helped Libya develop a 900km-range cruise missile able to carry a 1,100-lbs. payload.
Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, flies to Belgrade to demand that President Kostunica stamp out an illegal arms trade that has supplied sophisticated weapons not only to Iraq and Libya, but also to Liberia and possibly Burma.
US diplomats in the Balkans say a string of defence plants in Serbia, Bosnia, and Montenegro have supplied Baghdad with, among other weapons, armour-piercing missiles, rockets, anti-tank ammunition, tank engines, various explosives, chemical stabilisers, and grenade launchers, as well as missile fuel, MiG aircraft engines, spare parts and expert advice on how to configure air defences against the US.

‘This shows the urgency of Serbia taking steps to stop exports of any kind of arms or technology that could be used in any way for terrorist activities, or that could be used by these countries to manufacture weapons of mass destruction,’ the ICG warned.


The FRY cabinet discussed the matter in January 2002 but voted to continue trading, the ICG reports.
If the arms conduits to Baghdad are operating frequently with the blessing of Balkan and East European governments, Western officials say that the problem is much greater than we can imagine.

Source:
Daniel Simpson, "Belgrade Accused of Involvement in Arms Sales to Baghdad," New York Times, 31 October 2002;

"Yugoslavia: Firms Helped Libya Acquire Cruise Missiles" Global Security Newswire, Nuclear Threat Initiative, 31 October 2002.;
The Guardian (London) by Ian Traynor and Nicholas Wood

A Mafia Group of Ethnic Serbian Supremacists with ties to the Radical Orthodox Extremists dealing drugs and weapons of all kind with the Radical Islamist Mujahedeens!!!

Isn't it funny how “different” people view the same things not so differently?


Those who advocated democracy in Serbia overlooked its one fatal flaw. Just as there is no such thing as individual freedom within a democratic country, there is no such thing as sovereignty! As the Nazy Serbian State has power over serbian individuals, so does the Empire over its vassals. Serbs can only be willing servants of the current Serbian Regime like they were with its predecessor !
Serbia is not an Democratic Country but is an Nazy State Regime based and developed only and exclusively in war conflicts!!

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--> 30 April 1999, Volume 2, Number 17 BAGHDAD-BELGRADE-MOSCOW COOPERATION
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/1999/17-300499.html

--> 25 April 1999, Volume 2, Number 16 YUGOSLAV CHEMICAL WEAPONS: THE IRAQI CONNECTION. http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/1999/16-250499.html