From the New York Times:

As allied troops interview Iraqi scientists, the chances grow of finding the chemical weaponry that Western governments believe Saddam Hussein was hiding since the gulf war of 1991. If the troops do find it, they will also find something else: that the means for making it came primarily from Western companies years ago.



At right is a graphic showing the origins of what Iraq said it imported for its chemical weapon effort. The data was given to United Nations inspectors in the late 1990's, and was reconfirmed in Iraq's 12,000-page declaration last fall. But the statistical material on which it is based remained confidential until recently.

The data reveals that firms in Germany and France outstripped all others in selling the most important thing — specialized chemical-industry equipment that is particularly useful for producing poison gas. Without this equipment, none of the other imports would have been of much use.



From MSNBC

The French government insists that it has strictly enforced a tight embargo imposed on Saddam Hussein’s regime by the United Nations in 1990. But Saddam never lost his taste for French weapons or luxury goods. And evidence found by U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq suggests that—despite U.N. sanctions—the dictator continued to receive an abundant supply of both until very recently.



LT. GREG HOLMES, a tactical intelligence officer with the Third Infantry Division, told NEWSWEEK that U.S. forces discovered 51 Roland-2 missiles, made by a partnership of French and German arms manufacturers, in two military compounds at Baghdad International Airport. One of the missiles he examined was labeled 05-11 KND 2002, which he took to mean that the missile was manufactured last year. The charred remains of a more modern Roland-3 launcher was found just down the road from the arms cache. According to a mortar specialist with the same unit, radios used by many Iraqi military trucks brandished MADE IN FRANCE labels and looked brand new. RPG night sights stamped with the number 2002 and French labels also turned up. And a new Nissan pickup truck driven by a surrendering Iraqi officer was manufactured in France as well.



And from that rabid right-wing newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle

A Moscow-based organization was training Iraqi intelligence agents as recently as last September -- at the same time Russia was resisting the Bush administration's push for a tough stand against Saddam Hussein's regime, Iraqi documents discovered by The Chronicle show.



The documents found Thursday and Friday in a Baghdad office of the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi secret police, indicate that at least five agents graduated Sept. 15 from a two-week course in surveillance and eavesdropping techniques, according to certificates issued to the Iraqi agents by the "Special Training Center" in Moscow.

The Russian government, which has expressed intense disagreement with the U. S.-led war on Iraq, has repeatedly denied giving any military or security assistance to the Hussein regime. Any such aid would violate U.N. sanctions that have severely limited trade, military and other relations with Iraq since 1991.

U.S.-Russian relations have been strained by the split over Iraq. It is unclear whether these revelations, coming on top of U.S. charges that Moscow has been supplying other forms of forbidden assistance to Baghdad, may damage them further.