Report: Ukraine Help to Iraq Likely

U.S. and British investigators said Monday that there is a “credible possibility” that Ukraine sent sophisticated radar systems to Iraq through an intermediary.

The team of 13 U.S. and British experts spent a week in Ukraine last month investigating whether the country sent any Kolchuga radar systems to Baghdad in violation of U.N. sanctions. Their findings, compiled in a 16-page report, were released by the U.S. Embassy in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, on Monday.

The investigation came after the State Department said it had verified the authenticity of a July 2000 recording in which President Leonid D. Kuchma is apparently heard approving the sale of four Kolchuga systems to Iraq for $100 million in discussions with Valery Malev, then head of the state-owned arms sales company.

Kuchma has strongly denied the allegations. Ukrainian officials were not available for comment late Monday.

In their report, the investigators said they had been unable to prove that Ukraine transferred radar systems to Iraq “under openly declared contracts,” but said that “covert or illegal arms transfers, particularly with the complicity of third parties, remain a credible possibility.”

The investigators, who weren’t further identified by the embassy, said Ukraine had provided documentation on 72 Kolchuga systems but that four remain unaccounted for. Ukraine says it sold the four systems to China but refused investigators access to the contracts, saying they were commercial secrets.

The investigators said Ukrainian officials refused to give them complete reports of their own internal investigations into the matter and said some officials had refused to answer key questions, especially concerning the role of the country’s leadership.

Ukrainian officials told investigators they could not interview two key individuals -- Leonid Derkach, former chief of the State Security Service, and Yuri Orshansky, Ukraine’s former honorary consul to Iraq -- because they were not in the country, the report said.

The investigators were suspicious of a visit by an Iraqi delegation in June to the city of Donetsk, where the Kolchuga factory is located, partly because Ukrainian officials denied it took place, the report said. The ostensible purpose of the visit was to discuss oil and gas cooperation between the two countries, the report said.

The report concludes that Ukraine’s export controls “lack sufficient safeguards to prevent senior officials or entities from misusing state organs or bypassing the system.”

The radar allegations have soured Ukraine’s relations with the U.S. and Europe. Washington suspended $54 million in aid to the government last month as part of a policy review and threatened more sanctions in the future.

Kuchma was pointedly not invited to last week’s NATO meeting in Prague, Czech Republic, and was given a seat far from President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair when he showed up anyway.