Iraq Goes Shopping for Weapons in China
Saying that the U.S. couldn't provide what it wanted and was too slow to deliver what it did want, the Iraqi government has decided to buy $100 million worth of light weapons from China. The Washington Post reports that Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said the weapons will be used for the Iraqi police force. Talabani was in Washington for talks with President Bush.
The Post says that the deal worries military analysts because Iraq already has lost track of 190,000 weapons supplied by the United States. Many of those weapons are suspected to be in the hands of "Shiite and Sunni militias, insurgents and other forces seeking to destabilize Iraq and target U.S. troops."
"The problem is that the Iraqi government doesn't have — as yet — a clear plan for making sure that weapons are distributed, that they are properly monitored and repeatedly checked," said Rachel Stohl of the Center for Defense Information, an independent think tank. "The end-use monitoring will be left in the hands of a government and military in Iraq that is not yet ready for it. And there's not a way for the U.S. to mandate them to do it if they're not U.S. weapons."
A Pentagon spokesman says the U.S. is working with Iraq on weapons purchases but acknowledged that there is a delivery problem. "We haven't converted toaster factories to produce carbines and we're working hard just to supply our own troops," an administration official told the newspaper.
9:44 AM ET | 10- 4-2007 | permalink
