Germans Were Chief Weapons Supplier to Iraq, Paper Reports

German corporations were by far the largest suppliers of technology and hardware to Iraq’s military industry over the last 30 years, according to a German newspaper that claims to have glimpsed the recently released Iraqi weapons declaration.

The report in the left-leaning daily Die Tageszeitung on Tuesday details the past involvement of companies, institutions and individuals who exported materials to Iraq’s chemical, biological and nuclear industries. The newspaper reported that U.S. authorities were investigating whether a German microelectronics company was trading with Iraq throughout the 1990s in violation of U.N. economic sanctions. The name of the company was not disclosed.

For the most part, however, the newspaper account is another indication that the Iraqi regime has revealed no significant evidence about any current programs for weapons of mass destruction.

Much of the material cited by the newspaper -- which says it had at least partial access to Iraq’s nearly 12,000-page weapons declaration -- appears to bolster Washington’s argument that Baghdad is trying to obscure recent attempts to build chemical and nuclear weapons by dwelling on known programs of the past. Most of the trade reported by the newspaper was considered legal and occurred before the 1990 embargo imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait.

The Tageszeitung report is expected to create a buzz in Europe and prompt a reexamination of Germany’s role in arming a nation that today is being scoured by U.N. weapons inspectors while teetering close to war with the United States.

“I think those companies not named in public until today will probably check their books to find out if there is something they should be concerned about,” said Otfried Nassauer, director of the Berlin Information-Center for Transatlantic Security. “They will look to see if shipments were made that were not approved by the sanctions committee.”

The newspaper reported that Iraq’s weapons declaration listed 150 international firms as suppliers to its military industry. At least 80 of those -- more than the combined total of all other nations -- were based in Germany. The U.S. was the second-largest supplier, with 24 firms exporting to Baghdad. Other supplier countries included France, Britain, Egypt, Switzerland and the Czech Republic.

Although much of the information in the newspaper’s account isn’t new, it would be the first time that Iraq, through its weapons declaration, had publicly acknowledged its military suppliers.

The weapons declaration, according to the newspaper, “contains numerous hints about cases in which German institutions and government authorities, including the federal Economics Ministry, especially from the 1970s until the Gulf War of 1991, have tolerated and partly promoted illegal arms cooperation with Iraq.”

The German government said it would not respond to the newspaper’s account because it hadn’t seen the Iraqi document. The government investigated illegal arms sales in the early 1990s, and a spokesman for the Economics Ministry said Tuesday that there “have been a couple of cases in violation of the embargo.”

Die Tageszeitung said its reporting was based “on a complete original” of the Iraqi declaration. The article followed a report this year in Der Spiegel newsmagazine about a 58-year-old German exporter, identified as Bernd S., who teamed up with an Iraqi businessman in the late 1990s and shipped parachutes, flak jackets and drills used in artillery production to Baghdad. The Iraqi, identified as Sahib al-H., was arrested in Bulgaria two weeks ago. The case is expected to come to trial early next year.

Germany and many other Western countries, including the U.S., were heavy exporters to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s war machine in the 1970s and ‘80s, when Iraq was an ally amid the turmoil of the Middle East. The U.S. and other countries sided with Iraq throughout the 1980s in its war against Iran. There was little restriction on military trade, and when the Persian Gulf War erupted in 1991, many European and U.S. firms tried to skirt the trade embargo.

Germany has held numerous trials for managers and corporations accused of illegally trading with Iraq. One included charges against Rhein-Bayern Fahrzeugbau, which exported more than 1,000 ignition systems for Styx and Scud missiles that could carry biological and nuclear warheads. The company’s owner, Anton Eyerle, who belonged to the far-right National Democratic Party and was an admirer of Hussein, was sentenced to more than five years in prison.

Rheining Haus Corp. was fined $75,000 by the German government for shipping 24 tons of phosphorous oxychloride to Iraq in 1994-95. The substance, according to authorities, may have been used in Iraq’s chemical weapons industry.

Much of the trade by German companies dealt with “dual-use” items, meaning goods such as hospital equipment that could have been reconfigured to fit into the weapons industry. Corporations contend that they should not be held accountable for such practices.

“Germany really played a major role in equipping Iraq with dual-use goods that ended in the weapons of mass destruction industry throughout the 1990s,” Nassauer said. “They included measuring devices, dual-use goods in medical fields and production facilities. There was even a case in which a dough-mixing bakery machine ended up in Iraq’s chemical weapons industry.

“It seemed strange that so many of those machines were being ordered. You had to wonder who was eating all that bread.”