Iraq Said to Use French Electronics Gear : Technology: The contractor denies it supplied equipment reportedly aimed at jamming American AWACS.

A major French defense contractor Wednesday denied reports that it has supplied Iraqi military forces with electronic equipment capable of jamming American AWACS surveillance aircraft deployed in the Persian Gulf.

The terse denial by the large French electronics group, Thomson-CSF, followed a report in the London-based Financial Times that American officials have asked the French Defense Ministry for technical details of Thomson equipment that allegedly has been used by Iraq to jam communications of the Boeing airborne warning and control system aircraft.

“Thomson denies that it has supplied Iraqi forces with any equipment able to jam AWACS or AWACS-related planes,” Thomson said in a statement responding to the article.

The Financial Times article also reported that some of the equipment used to jam the AWACS aircraft was part of a $170-million contract signed in February between Thomson and the government of Saddam Hussein. According to Pierre Marion, former head of French intelligence, the Iraqis planned to use the electronics equipment to construct their own AWACS aircraft by mounting it on Soviet Ilyushin 76 transport planes.

Thomson, however, said no equipment from the contract has been delivered to Iraq and added that the equipment in the contract “was in no way related with surveillance or countermeasures.” The state-owned Thomson company, France’s largest high-tech arms producer, said the contract has been embargoed as part of the sanctions against Iraq.

A spokesman for Defense Minister Jean-Pierre Chevenement declined to comment on the reported U.S. request for information. “These subjects are always delicate,” the official said, “since they involve both important commercial and military considerations.”

However, since the gulf crisis began, American and French officials have reported general cooperation between the two countries regarding details of French high-tech equipment in Iraqi hands, including the R-530 air-to-air missiles used by Iraqi pilots.

Over the last 20 years, France has been the second-biggest supplier to Iraq’s military, behind the Soviet Union, accounting for 20% of Iraqi foreign arms purchases.

“The Iraqis were even able to get equipment that was never procured by France’s own military,” said one Western diplomat in Paris.

A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment Wednesday night on whether Iraqi forces had attempted to jam AWACS operations in the Middle East, saying that “we can’t go into the operational details of whether jamming is taking place or not.”

However, the spokesman stressed that the AWACS has “some inherent and sophisticated jam-resistant capabilities” and said the Air Force felt “very confident” that the Saudi Arabian-based aircraft could carry out their mission.

The sale of sophisticated military equipment to Iraq was supposedly reviewed in France by the Joint Ministerial Commission for War Materiel, composed of several key ministers in the government, including Chevenement.

But French embarrassment about the quantity and sophistication of arms supplied to Iraq, which now may be used against French forces in the gulf, has caused some French politicians to call for a legislative oversight commission to be created to monitor arms sales.

A source close to Chevenement charged that the reports against Thomson were part of a campaign by enemies of the defense minister.