Mystery of the Sunken Gyros

Published in the November/December issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the article is based on new research and hitherto unpublished information. Related material includes a Washington Post article on the case, and a CNS press release. For earlier articles on the Iraq gyro case, please see our Iraq Special Collection page.

Washington Post article | CNS press release | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists site

Iraq Special Collections page | Iraq WMD capabilities profile | CNS Media Contacts on Iraq

The Mystery of the Sunken Gyros

By Vladimir Orlov & William C. Potter

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
November/December 1998
Vol. 54, No. 6

Although the UN Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) has exposed many dimensions of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs, the full story of Iraq's secret efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction may never be known. Many of the best-kept secrets involve Baghdad's clandestine foreign procurement efforts since the Gulf War.

Drawing on a wide range of previously untapped sources, we have managed to piece together an account of Iraqi subterfuge in the pursuit of missile technology. The story also reveals the Russian defense establishment's greed, and the reluctance of the Russian and U.S. governments to expose the Moscow-Baghdad missile axis.

Caught

Acting on an intelligence tip, on November 10, 1995 the Jordanian government intercepted a shipment of 240 Russian missile-guidance gyroscopes and accelerometers bound for Iraq. The next month, between December 16 and 30, a team of Iraqi scuba divers were directed by UNSCOM to dredge the Tigris River near Baghdad. They pulled out more than 200 additional missile instruments and components. These parts, many bearing clearly identifiable serial numbers in Cyrillic script, included gas pressure regulators, accelerometers, GIMBAL position indicators, and gyroscopes. (1) These items, like those recovered earlier in Jordan, had come from dismantled Russian submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SS-N-18s) designed to deliver nuclear warheads to targets more than 4,000 miles away.

The Russian government initially denied that the gyroscopes were Russian, notwithstanding their serial numbers. Moscow also encouraged a rumor that the instruments had been stolen from a Ukrainian manufacturer. But following UNSCOM Chairman Rolf Ekeus's visit to Moscow in early February 1996, Russian authorities grudgingly acknowledged that the equipment might be of Russian origin. Although they denied that the Russian government was involved, they agreed to initiate a criminal investigation, which began on April 9, 1996.

Two years later, the case was abandoned. Russia's main internal security agency, the Federal Security Service (FSB) had decided to close their case in October 1997; and in February 1998, the investigation was formally concluded. No prosecutions were recommended. The prosecutor's office said it could not establish that a felony had been committed; although the gyroscopes had been removed from decommissioned missiles, they were being sold as scrap metal. And exporting scrap metal, even to an embargoed country, was not worthy of further legal effort. The FSB argued that, technically, there was no criminal provision under which the case could be prosecuted.

Both Russia and Iraq would like the story to end there. The United States also appears content to accept Moscow's explanation and to absolve the Russian Federation of any export control violations. But the findings of the Russian investigation raise more questions than they answer: How many Russian guidance systems (and how much equipment for manufacturing, assembling, and testing them) were shipped to Iraq? And how many remain unaccounted for? Is this equipment militarily significant? And has the Iraqi-Russian missile-export relationship in fact ended?

Broader questions concern the extent of Russian official awareness of- or involvement in-the missile deals, and issues of Russian export controls and lax enforcement. Is this affair symptomatic of a more general shift in Russia's nonproliferation policy? And finally, why has the United States had so little to say?

First encounters

We believe the story began on September 1, 1993, when Wi'am Gharbiya, a 30-year-old Palestinian-Jordanian businessman arrived in Moscow in search of guidance components for Iraq's Scud missiles.

Gharbiya had begun making deals for an Iraqi defense electronics organization, the Salahadin State Establishment, earlier that year. According to our sources, he had also been doing business with Iraqi security services since 1990, when he arrived in post-invasion Kuwait. At that time, he allegedly sold the Iraqis information obtained from pillaged Kuwaiti computers. These early transactions reportedly led to a meeting with Hussein Kamel, a Saddam Hussein son-in-law and director of Iraq's Ann-Al Khas (special security organization) and its Military Industrialization Commission.(2)

In the early summer of 1993, Gharbiya signed a contract with Karama, a key Iraqi aerospace and defense firm that wanted a supply of Scud gyro potentiometers (devices that indicate the gyroscope's position by sensing its electrical signals). The agreement came soon after Hussein Kamel ordered Iraqi engineers to produce a new and more accurate missile. (3) Less than two weeks before he left for Moscow, Gharbiya was paid through a $1.76 million account that Iraq had established at the Ittihad Bank in Amman, Jordan.

Once in Moscow, Gharbiya contacted a "Mr. Muthana," an Iraqi citizen living in Russia, whom he may previously have met in Baghdad. Muthana in turn introduced Gharbiya to "Jamal," an Iraqi postgraduate student at Moscow State University. Jamal served as Gharbiya's principal translator and facilitator. Through him, Gharbiya met other people at the university, one of whom put him in touch with an accountant at a missile dismantlement facility in Sergeyev Posad (formerly Zagorsk), a city of beautiful churches an hour's drive from Moscow.

From September 10 through September 24, Gharbiya was joined by an Iraqi delegation that was also in search of missile system contacts and contracts. Gharbiya helped them set up a number of meetings, although the result of these encounters is unclear.

After the delegation departed, Gharbiya made two more visits to the Sergeyev Posad missile dismantlement facility-the "Research and Testing Institute of Chemical and Construction Equipment," or "niikhsm"-where he was offered high-precision gyroscopes and accelerometers. He bought 10­12 sample inertial-guidance instruments, and through another Russian defense industry contact, he acquired samples of Scud gyroscope motors and 30 potentiometers and tachometers. He appears to have packed all of these samples in boxes and, with the aid of a bribe (prompted by a customs official's question about their low declared value), cleared them through customs for shipment to Jordan. They arrived in Baghdad some time in late 1993.4

The main deal

Gharbiya left Moscow in early October, but he returned in mid-December 1993. During this visit, and again during as many as three additional trips to Moscow in the first half of 1994, Gharbiya cultivated his earlier contacts and developed new ones in the Russian electronics industry and the military-industrial complex. His search for defense goods for Iraq also took him to Ukraine and Moldova.

When Gharbiya was not on the road looking for suppliers in the former Soviet Union, he was in Baghdad generating business. In August 1994, soon after returning from Moscow and Kiev, he negotiated perhaps his biggest deal. This was a contract with Modher Al-Sadiq, director of the Ibn Al Haythan Missile Center. In a secret protocol to a contract for raw materials and electronic parts, Modher agreed to pay Gharbiya $3.9 million if he could supply certain specific missile technology items, including precision-guidance instruments. This purchase order appears to be linked to Modher's efforts to produce a new, more accurate, and possibly longer-range version of the Ababil-100 missile. (5)

In fall 1994, shortly after signing the agreement, Gharbiya made several additional journeys to Moscow. On one trip in early November he was accompanied by a delegation of missile experts from both the Karama and Ibn Al Haythan facilities. The delegation, led by General Jassem of Iraq's Military Industrialization Commission, held discussions with very senior officials at Russian missile design and production facilities. Those facilities included Almaz, Avangard, Graphit, Mars Rotor, Priborist, Fakel, and Energomash. The Iraqis met the Russians both on-site and in apartments or at offices off company grounds. The discussions often involved repeat meetings.

The representatives from Karama and Ibn Al Haythan and their Russian counterparts signed literally dozens of protocols for the supply of a wide array of missile goods, technology, and services. The Russians would supply missile engines, missile design, training, technology, manufacturing, and testing for engines, airframes, and guidance and control systems. According to Iraqi accounts of these meetings, nearly all of the Russians were willing to supply the most advanced technologies, and eager to work out specific offers as soon as possible, as long as payment was assured.

Two of the more significant agreements were with the Mars Rotor Plant and Energomash. The Mars Rotor deal included the provision of guidance system manufacturing equipment, as well as the understanding that the company would send Russian experts to Baghdad to certify the equipment and provide training in its use.

The protocol with Energomash, the huge Soviet-Russian producer of rocket engines, was for complete technology transfer (including production equipment) for two types of "advanced" liquid-propellant missile engines. Energomash agreed to provide a complete rocket engine with a four- ton thrust, as well as design calculations, final design, and five complete samples of a propulsion system for a "communication satellite" whose size matched the payload specifications for an intermediate-range Scud-derived missile.

The Russians also agreed to train the Iraqis in the design, production, and testing of modern rocket engines, and to enter into a project to jointly design a rocket engine. Energomash officials assured the Iraqis that they could go ahead with these deals even without the approval of their government-by paying bribes to the appropriate people.

The Iraqi delegation returned home on November 24. But Gharbiya stayed in Moscow for more than a month, apparently working on finalizing the offers from the Russian firms, and probably renewing his contacts in Sergeyev Posad. When he returned to Baghdad in early 1995, he drafted new contracts with his Iraqi sponsors based on the November protocols. His contracts with Karama alone totaled over $65 million.

On April 21, 1995, Gharbiya went back to Moscow to finalize the deals that had been initiated in November. At a visit to niikhsm, he agreed to purchase a large quantity of strategic gyroscopes and other guidance system components from dismantled submarine-launched ballistic missiles. These purchases, which corresponded to the list of items requested by Modher Al-Sadiq, were to be paid for, at least in part, by a line of credit established at the Moscow branch of Turkey's Yapy Toko Bank. According to Gharbiya, no money actually changed hands at the time, but he promised to pay his suppliers $120,000 as soon as the end-user in Iraq accepted the goods.

At this point, the story gets murkier. Some time before Gharbiya left Moscow at the end of June, the senior management at niikhsm signed a contract with a front company, "SPM-Systema," also registered in Sergeyev Posad. Niikhsm agreed to transfer approximately 80 sets of strategic inertial instruments (gyros and accelerometers) to SPM-Systema, which was to move the goods to Moscow in two lots. [Due to a typographical error, the number of instruments was listed as 800 sets, rather than 80, in the print version of this article.] (6) Nisov Investment, a Russian company managed by Nigerians, was engaged to handle the customs work necessary for exporting the items.

Nisov appears to have believed the goods were highly sensitive, precision electronic instruments. Following Gharbiya's instructions, the shipment was described on customs forms as "micromotors," one of a number of general customs classifications for electrical instruments.

With Nisov's assistance, Gharbiya had no difficulty with customs at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport, and the cache of guidance instruments was flown to Amman by Royal Jordanian Airlines on two or more flights. At Al-Malike Alya Airport in Amman, the gyroscopes and other assorted equipment were sent to a customs warehouse to await receipt of documents from Gharbiya to transship the consignment to Baghdad.

At the insistence of the Iraqis, samples of the gyroscopes had been tested and "certified" at the Mars Rotor Plant in Moscow, where Gharbiya also bought lab equipment, including a specially configured "rate table" used to test guidance instruments. He also appears to have purchased a considerable amount of machinery and related equipment for the manufacture and assembly of these instruments. The shipment of this equipment to Amman was handled by an entity known as the "University of Business, Law, and Computer Technology."

The first batch of instruments (including 120 gyroscopes and 120 accelerometers) and possibly the gyro manufacturing equipment, arrived in Amman some time in Jun. (7) The remaining inertial instruments and related major components arrived on Royal Jordanian Airlines on August 18. That shipment was followed by the laboratory test equipment, which arrived in Amman in September.

On June 30, shortly after the first shipment reached Jordan, two Iraqi experts inspected Gharbiya's purchases. At least some of the first batch of gyros, accelerometers, and other devices were then forwarded to Baghdad, where they arrived by late July.

Then, on August 8, Hussein Kamel defected, and on August 15 Modher ordered some, if not all, of the Russian guidance systems in Baghdad dumped in the Tigris River. At about the same time, the UN Special Commission learned of Gharbiya's illicit exports and made plans for their seizure.(8) According to Iraqi law enforcement officials, just days after the first gyroscopes were pulled out of the Tigris, Wi'am Gharbiya was arrested in Iraq "on suspicion of involvement in the illegal supply of missile components."

A narrow investigation

The Russian government has ignored UNSCOM'S requests for information about the Gharbiya case. And our interviews with officials from several Russian agencies reveal a number of disturbing findings that raise doubts about the scope of the inquiry and the Russian government's commitment to enforcing export controls. Interviews with other Russian, Iraqi, UNSCOM, and Western sources familiar with the Gharbiya case point to the possibility that not all of Gharbiya's missile-related acquisitions have been recovered. Finally, our analysis of the case suggests that the Russian government and the United States have different reasons for minimizing the nonproliferation implications of the Russian-Iraqi missile deal.

One of the most surprising aspects of the Russian criminal investigation was its narrow scope. It paid little attention to the export of missile-guidance manufacturing, assembly, and test equipment, or the planned export of Russian technical personnel and rocket engines. (9)

Why the narrow focus on gyroscopes and the like? One plausible explanation is that experts and test equipment, unlike used gyroscopes from dismantled ballistic missiles, could not have been dismissed as "scrap metal." It would have been far more difficult to brush aside the criminality of those exports.

Another possible explanation is the desire of powerful individuals or government agencies to conceal the true extent of Gharbiya's Russian contacts. Given the frequency of his visits to Russia and the extensive nature of his contacts and contracts with the Russian defense establishment, it is hard to imagine that Russian authorities, at some level, were not aware of his activities beyond Sergeyev Posad where the strategic gyroscopes were obtained. It is even harder to imagine that his visits to various facilities and his contacts with certain individuals were not sanctioned by the FSB personnel who are present at all sensitive sites.

In defining the subject of its investigation in extremely narrow terms, the government was also able to take advantage of a change in the Russian criminal code that occurred during the course of the investigation. The reasoning behind the government's legal argument is simple, but the Russian export control system in question is complex and difficult to describe. (10) Four points require explanation:

First, the transfer of the strategic gyroscopes from niikhsm to SPM-Systema did not violate export control regulations because it was a domestic transaction.

Second, although Russia had formally subscribed to the international embargo on Iraq, it had failed to pass implementing legislation or any regulation making it illegal to violate that embargo. The regulation finally entered into force in November 1997, six and a half years after UN Security Council Resolution 687, which placed near-blanket restrictions on weapons technology exports to Iraq, was adopted-and about one week after the FSB closed its investigation of the Gharbiya case. (11)

Third, although Russia is a party to the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) under which the equipment and guidance instruments exported to Iraq should have been regulated, and has in place regulations implementing that agreement, the revised Russian criminal code effective January 1, 1997 contains no explicit penalty for the export of MTCR-proscribed delivery systems or components. In that respect, the new criminal code is less comprehensive than the one it replaced. According to Russian law, had the criminal investigation been closed before the new criminal code was adopted, there would have been straightforward grounds for prosecuting at least the niikhsm and SPM-Systema parties to the export deal.

Finally, although the changes in the criminal code provided a convenient excuse for not prosecuting the case, the new code has a provision that could have been used to prosecute the Russian conspirators-if the authorities had desired to do so. Article 188, Part II provides for punishment of up to seven years of imprisonment "for transfer across the Russian Federation's customs border . . . of materials and equipment that can be used in developing weapons of mass destruction," if the act is committed "with fraudulent use of documents or customs identification, or achieved through . . . false declaration."

Government prosecutors chose to interpret this language as excluding weapon delivery systems, although they could have made a strong legal argument for inclusion. There are indications that people within both the FSB and the Foreign Ministry who wanted to prosecute the case under the new criminal code succumbed to pressure from higher authorities.

Timid responses

Regardless of the legal intricacies of the case and the question of whether or not justice was served by closing the investigation, it has been generally assumed that the exports from Moscow did not increase Iraqi missile capabilities. That assumption is based on the belief that all of the items exported before mid-August 1995 were recovered by UNSCOM, and that Russian missile exports to Iraq ceased after 1995. Both premises need further examination.

It is difficult to know whether all of the Russian exports were recovered because of the imprecise and inconsistent manner in which the items were referenced by Gharbiya, his Iraqi sponsors, the FSB, and UNSCOM. As best we can discern, Gharbiya arranged to buy 80 sets of SS-N-18 guidance systems, each with three gyros, three accelerometers, three GIMBAL "angular position indicators," and one or two gas pressure regulators. The niikhsm deal, therefore, involved at least 800 guidance system components, enough for 80 missiles.

Of the 800 components that arrived in Amman, 240 were strategic gyroscopes and 240 were accelerometers. However, only 120 gyroscopes and 120 accelerometers were seized in Jordan, and 33 gyroscopes and 26 accelerometers were pulled out of the Tigris River. Thus, some 180 gyroscopes and accelerometers-enough for about 30 missile-guidance systems-are unaccounted for.

Of equal concern are the other missile-related goods Gharbiya contracted for from other firms-assembly and testing manufacturing equipment related to guidance instruments. We are aware that the laboratory test equipment sent in September was seized by Jordanian authorities, but the disposition of the gyroscope manufacturing and assembly equipment is unknown. Interestingly, in this regard, there were reports that after his arrest Gharbiya mentioned his earlier interest in selling some of the Russian goods to Algeria and Egypt. We were unable, however, to determine if Gharbiya sold any Russian missile-guidance components to other customers.

Not surprisingly, Iraq has tried to minimize the significance of its missile procurement activities when not denying them altogether. The usual Iraqi argument has been two-fold: that the activities in question were not prohibited, and that the items were militarily useless. Neither argument is persuasive.

UN Security Council Resolution 687 includes measures to prevent the reconstitution of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Although the resolution contains language-probably ill-advised-that distinguishes between prohibited missiles (those with a range greater than 150 kilometers) and those with a lesser range, it also clearly prohibits Iraqi possession of or efforts to "use, develop, construct, or acquire" major parts for proscribed missiles. There is no question that the strategic gyroscopes found in Iraq and those destined for delivery there were proscribed items. Other missile components, technology, and systems identified in the November 1994 protocols also appear to place Iraq in direct violation of the UN Security Council Resolution. Despite the Iraqi argument that their intention was to procure items for missiles with a range of less than 150 kilometers, nearly all of the items and technologies provided for in the agreements with Russian firms were usable for longer-range missiles.

Significantly, Resolution 687 also calls on all states "to prevent the sale or supply to Iraq, or the promotion or facilitation of such sale or supply, by their nationals or from their territory" of proscribed missiles and major component parts. (12) What the Russian suppliers were offering, as evidenced by the November 1994 protocols, were items that could have supported a complete intermediate-range missile development program-from training to production to assembly.

The actual gyroscopes and associated missile-guidance instruments recovered from the Tigris River were no longer usable. Some, if not most, had been functional, however, before they were dumped-as were the other gyroscopes destined for Iraq, a fact attested to by the Iraqi requirement that they be tested at the Mars Rotor Plant before being shipped to Iraq.

We have focused on the extensive agreements Wi'am Gharbiya made in Russia from 1993 to 1995, and we have no hard evidence that the Russian-Iraqi "missile relationship" persisted past that period. On the other hand, recent news reports have described Iraqi efforts to procure Russian missile guidance systems that bear an uncanny resemblance to Gharbiya's earlier deals. According to one account, Iraq reached agreement with a Russian company to purchase over 100 accelerometers sometime after spring 1997, with a Jordanian front company reportedly serving as intermediary. (13) The deal allegedly was concluded after Iraq became aware of the Russian firm's products at the Idex-97 defense exhibition in Abu Dhabi in March 1997. (14)

It is well known that the collapse of the Soviet system's command economy has had a debilitating effect on the Russian military-industrial complex. Nowhere are there stronger incentives to sell anything to anyone for the right price. And the tendency to emphasize short-term economic considerations at the expense of longer-term nonproliferation objectives is not confined to the Russian defense sector.

A number of imprudent export- and foreign-policy decisions signal the growing discrepancy between Moscow's declared nonproliferation policy and its practices. Indicative of this divergence is the adoption of strengthened export control regulations just as the government's capacity and/or inclination to regulate the export of sensitive defense-related commodities has been reduced.

The diminished importance attached to nonproliferation objectives, which can only encourage enterprises to ignore formal export control procedures, is evident from the state-sanctioned nuclear exports to India (reconfirmed after New Delhi's May 1998 weapons tests), and the export of other sensitive technologies to China, Iran, and South Korea, among others. There has also been lax enforcement of nuclear-materials control and accounting regulations, and in the battle against illicit nuclear transactions and the "brain drain." Unfortunately, the failure to prosecute the Russians involved in missile exports to Iraq is consistent with Russia's incapacity to implement declared noproliferation policy.

Given its own forceful declaratory policy, the United States has been very slow and/or restrained in its criticism of Russia's impaired nonproliferation policy. In part, this restraint may stem from the long history of cooperation on nuclear nonproliferation that persisted across administrations, even during the peak of the Cold War.

The reluctance to challenge Russia more forcefully on the nonproliferation front may also relate to a less-than-stellar U.S. record in the export control field; a sympathy for the plight of non-communist Russian leaders who have been continually buffeted by political, economic, and social crises; an effort to avoid additional polemics with Moscow during the push for NATO enlargement; and a wariness about giving congressional critics of the president's Russia policy any more ammunition.

An additional explanation for senior U.S. officials' readiness to accept Moscow's decision to dismiss the case and to downplay Russian missile exports to Baghdad was suggested by recent revelations about a reversal in early 1998 in U.S. policy toward Iraq and UNSCOM. If the United States had decided to pursue a less confrontational approach toward Iraq, and to rein in the UNSCOM inspections, it would hardly have wanted to throw the spotlight on an illicit Russian-Iraqi deal.

Implications for the future

Iraq has described the Gharbiya affair as an inconsequential example of an overzealous electronics dealer working independently to deliver items that were not needed, were not requested, and were in fact rejected by the Iraqi government. Neither Russia nor the United States has strongly contested this interpretation-at least publicly.

In contrast, our examination of the case suggests that it was a sophisticated procurement operation designed to circumvent a UN-mandated trade embargo. It also reveals the vulnerability of the Russian military establishment to any foreign buyer with a good line of credit. The underdeveloped state of Russian export controls, especially with respect to enforcement, compounds this vulnerability, as does the unstable economic and political environment.

It may be that our findings pertain only to the past. Perhaps the covert Iraqi procurement network that penetrated the Russian defense establishment in the mid-1990s was confined to Russia and has been eradicated. Conceivably, newly adopted Russian export controls will make it more difficult for sensitive military goods and services to evade controls and more likely that violators will be prosecuted. (15) It is also possible that the very positive past mode of U.S.-Soviet cooperation in nonproliferation will be rediscovered and that it will bolster UNSCOM and prevent the reconstitution of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

These possibilities, however, are challenged by the grim reality of an increasingly obstructionist Iraq, a weakened UNSCOM, an economically ravaged Russia, and an isolated U.S. superpower with little appetite for either multilateral nonproliferation or unilateral counterproliferation. Unless these problems are recognized squarely and concerted action is taken to reverse them, the next items dredged from the Tigris River could be UNSCOM'S monitoring equipment. n

Notes

1. The total of 210 instruments included 33 gyroscopes and 26 accelerometers.

2. See Vladimir Orlov, "New Details of the Gyroscope Deal Investigation," Pir Arms Control Letters, April 1998.

3. The order was given in a late evening meeting on May 5, 1993.

4. The Iraqis told the UN Special Commission that these samples were rejected and returned to Gharbiya for transport out of the country. Their subsequent disposition is unknown.

5. Several contracts were signed, one of which was between Gharbiya and the Office of Investment and Contracts, a shadowy body created by Hussein Kamel for money laundering and embezzlement. The office was eliminated immediately after his defection in August 1995.

6. It is known that senior niikhsm officials assisted in the physical transport of these goods.

7. The manufacturing equipment may have arrived in mid-July.

8. See Jim Hoagland, "Ritter's Resignation," Washington Post, Aug. 27, 1998, p. 21.

9. Although it is unclear if any technicians from the Mars Rotor Plant ever traveled to Iraq as specified in the contract with Gharbiya, guidance testing equipment from Mars Rotor was shipped to Amman.

10. For an extended discussion on this subject, see Vladimir Orlov and Anna Otkina, "Uroki dela o giroskopakh" ("Lessons of the Gyroscope Deal"), Yaderny Kontrol, no. 2, March-April 1998, pp. 13­17.

11. Security Council Resolution 661 (August 6, 1990), which imposed an economic embargo on Iraq, included a proscription against sales of "weapons or any other military equipment." Resolution 687 related that proscription more specifically to weapons of mass destruction.

12. Security Council Resolution 687, April 3, 1991. See The United Nations and the Iraq-Kuwait Conflict 1990­1996 (New York: UN Department of Public Information, 1996), pp. 193­98.

13. Michael Evans, "Russian Deal to Sell Saddam Key Missile Parts," London Times, August 4, 1998.

14. Ibid.

15. These new regulations include Presidential Decree No. 54 "On the Realization of State Policy in the Sphere of the Missile-Space Industry" (January 20, 1998); Government Resolution No. 57 "On Enhancing Control Over the Export of Dual-Use Goods and Services Related to Weapons of Mass Destruction and Missile Delivery Systems" (January 22, 1998); and Government Resolution No. 249 "On Introducing Changes to Russian Federal Government Resolution No. 737 'On Joining the International Missile Technology Control Regime'" (February 26, 1998).

Vladimir Orlov is director of the PIR Center for Policy Studies in Moscow. William C. Potter is director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California.

Washington Post article | CNS press release | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists site

Iraq Special Collections page | Iraq WMD capabilities profile | CNS Media Contacts on Iraq

Return to Top