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Ukraine's proliferation
skeletons
By David Isenberg
WASHINGTON - Recent stories about the
alleged sale of 12 former Soviet nuclear-capable
unarmed air-launched cruise missiles (ALCM) to
Iran and China - six to each nation - by Ukraine
advance a long unfolding slow-motion scandal, but
still leave many questions unanswered.
Allegations of Ukranian arms sales to Iran
and other countries have been around for years.
For example, in November 2002 lawmaker Hryhoriy
Omelchenko, a former reserve colonel in the
Ukranian intelligence service, promised to lay out
"proven facts" of Ukraine's arms sales "not only
to Iraq, North Korea, China and Iran", but even
other states, according to his office. Omelchenko
is the same legislator who went public last month
in letters to President Victor Yuschenko and the
prosecutor general, Svyatoslav Piskun, with
allegations of the smuggling operation.
The 2002 charge came at the same time
that Ukraine was in the news for a scandal over
the alleged sale of Kolchuga air-defense radars to
Iraq. It was then feared that the radars could be
used to track Western aircraft in Iraq's no-fly
zones.
Former president Leonid D Kuchma
himself was implicated several years ago in the
sale of a highly advanced radar system to Iraq
during Saddam Hussein's regime. On secret
recordings made by a former bodyguard in the
president's office, likely in the summer of 2000,
a voice resembling Kuchma's approved of the sale
of the Kolchuga radar system through a Jordanian
intermediary.
The United States, as well
as outside experts, authenticated the
controversial tapes, which also suggested Kuchma's
complicity in the murder of an opposition
journalist. Kuchma has repeatedly denied any role
in those crimes.
While there is no
definitive smoking gun that Iraq received the
Kolchuga systems, the presumption is that it must
be considered likely, according to a report by a
joint US-United Kingdom team.
Interestingly, this was at the same time
that US Special Operations Forces had been ordered
to launch operations against arms supply lines to
terrorists and the three rogue nations referred to
by President George W Bush as the "axis of evil" -
Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
But apparently
they did not know about the missile sale to Iran
or were not authorized to conduct an operation
against it. The larger point, however, is that
Ukraine, under Kuchma, was widely known as a
willing supplier of weaponry.
Since taking
office in January after the "Orange
Revolution", Yushchenko has promised to
investigate illicit weapons-dealings, including
the allegation that election rival Kuchma approved
the Kolchuga radar sale to Iraq.
Ukraine's
intelligence agency, the State Security Service
(Sluzhba Bespeky Ukrayiny - SBU), launched its
investigation of the case involving Iran and China
on February 14, 2004, during Kuchma's presidency.
It announced last year that it had "exposed and
curtailed the activities of an international
criminal group of arms traders who intended to
export from Ukraine 20 air-launched cruise
missiles".
But the probe was not
publicized until this February, when lawmaker
Omelchenko wrote Yushchenko asking him to pursue a
full investigation.
According
to Omelchenko, in 2000 Russian national Oleg
Orlov and a Ukrainian partner identified as E
V Shilenko, also a Russian national, exported
20 Kh-55 cruise missiles through a fake contract
and end-user certificate with Russia's state-run
arms dealer and with a firm called Progress, which is
a daughter company of Ukrspetseksport,
Ukraine's weapons-exporting agency.
Orlov and
Shilenko used the Ukrspetseksport state company to
convey to Progress a forged contract on behalf of
the Russian federal state arms company
Rosvooruzheniye and an end-user certificate
purporting to be from the Defense Ministry of the
Russian Federation for the delivery of 20 Kh-55
cruise missiles to that country.
Omelchenko's letter says the cruise
missiles were concealed in the arsenals of the
Ukrainian Defense Ministry, although in documents
signed by senior ministry officials they were
listed as having been destroyed.
Ukrainian
weapons dealers ferried missiles to China through
a Ukraine-based cargo company run by a former
secret service agent, according to Omelchenko. He
also said that in 2001, weapons dealers sent
ground targeting systems, maintenance equipment
and missile technicians to Iran. Profits from the
sales were estimated at US$2.1 million or more.
Reportedly, Sarfraz Haider, an Australian
businessman of Afghan-Iranian origin, said to be
part of the arms trafficking gang, was killed,
according to his family and a Ukrainian police
report. He lived in Canberra and Sydney before
moving to London and then Cyprus in 2000.
His family originally believed his death
in Cyprus last year was the result of a motorbike
accident. But after an autopsy on Haider's
body, the family now believes he was murdered. His
neck had been broken and his aorta split, and
there were signs of a struggle. The family claims
Iranian agents paid Cypriot police to eliminate
Haider because he knew too much.
It still
is not clear exactly what kind of missiles were
sold to Iran and China. Press reports say it was
the Kh-55 Granat. But according to
GlobalSecurity.org there are actually three
versions; the Kh-55, Kh-55-OK and the Kh-55SM.
Production of the stretched-range version, the Kh-55SM, began
in 1986. This was fielded in the
1990s. The modification provided for increased range, giving
it an estimated reach of 3,000 kilometers. The
Kh-55 has been in Russian service since
1984 as a nuclear-armed air-launched cruise missile and
can carry a 200-kiloton nuclear warhead. It
is the Soviet counterpart to the US AGM-86
ALCM. It was originally deployed with strategic
bombers Tu-95 MS and Tu-160.
Yet according
to the SBU, some of the ALCMs were of the Kh-55 as
well as the Kh-55SM types. Who the Kh-55 missiles
went to is unclear.
Iran does not operate
long-range bombers, but it is believed Tehran
could adapt its Soviet-built Su-24 strike aircraft
to launch the missile. The missile's range would
put Israel and a number of other US allies within
reach.
After the collapse of the USSR some
of the missiles and their carrier aircraft
remained beyond the limits of Russia, in
particular, in Ukraine and in Kazakhstan.
Yet according to Bohdan Ferents, the
lawyer for Volodymyr Yevdokimov - director of a
cargo company, Ukraviazakaz, and one of at least
six arms dealers secretly indicted in January for
the missiles sale - the missiles were a far cry
from being operational.
In an article in
the March 5 issue of the Ukrainian newspaper
Zerkalo Nedeli, he says:
In the first place, they were items
made in 1987. Their service life is eight years.
According to the technical specifications and
instructions, their service life can be extended
only if the factory designers are directly
brought in - in other words, if there is a
technical inspection, involving either a visit
to the place where the missiles are stored or an
inspection at the factory itself. Since 1992,
the storage of these missiles has not,
unfortunately, matched the requirements. The
technical and process documentation for the
missiles was removed from Ukraine to Russia -
which makes it impossible to sell them for their
original purpose. All the warheads - let's
regard them as the weapon's main component -
were sent off to Russia. Not a single warhead
remains on Ukrainian territory. This
raises the intriguing possibility that what
actually transpired was not a sale but a con.
Ferents said: "We call them 'items'. The
evidence presented in the case material and tested
in court enables one to talk about a typical
swindle with regard to the intentions of Iran and
China, which are trying to obtain weapons. In
other words, the negotiations were about cruise
missiles, but what was exported was mere junk."
David Isenberg, a senior analyst
with the Washington-based British American
Security Information Council (BASIC), has a wide
background in arms control and national security
issues. The views expressed are his own.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact us for information
on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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