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| International |
| Kuchma sez he'll form a committee... |
| 2002-09-25 |
| President Leonid Kuchma bowed to opposition pressure on Wednesday, meeting leaders who spent the night on hunger strike squatting in the corridors of his offices, but he bluntly rejected their demands for him to quit. "I'm a dictator. Dictators don't quit until they're hanging from lamp posts..." Under pressure from Washington over allegations he approved the sale of an early warning radar system to Iraq, the veteran leader told the opposition he would hold an open hearing on the arms sales charges and officials said he did not do it. Do what? Form the committee? Or approve the arms sales? NATO Secretary General George Robertson called on Ukraine on Wednesday to explain allegations of arms sales to Iraq and said relations between the alliance and Kiev had hit a "tricky moment". Even though they're not too closely related, Ukrainian sounds an awful lot like German... "I can tell you that there is a very serious atmosphere on this subject and some very serious questions still remain to be answered," Robertson told a news conference in Warsaw after a two-day meeting of NATO defence ministers. "Ukraine? Aren't they part of Russia? Oh, you mean not yet... I mean, not anymore..." The United States has alleged that Ukraine sold Iraq a sophisticated early warning system that tracks aircraft without giving itself away. Yep. I'd call that an unfriendly act... It has suspended more than $50 million in aid to Ukraine after saying it had authenticated a July 2000 recording of Kuchma giving the chief of his arms export agency the go-ahead to sell the surveillance system to Baghdad. Whoa! Got him on tape, did they? Ukrainian opposition leaders, who this month led some of the biggest anti-Kuchma protests since the country won independence from the Soviet Union more than 10 years ago, said they had won an important victory by forcing him to agree to talk. Kuchma's a bad boy. He had some promise, back when Ukraine was going its own way from the Soviet Union, but he settled into the president-for-life routine pretty quickly. He's a fellow whose time has gone... |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |
| #3 It's really bad luck to know too much about a dictator's doings. Nice snag on the transcript, Steve! |
| Posted by: Fred 2002-09-25 11:20:31 |
| #2 Just read my own post and noticed this:Valery Malev, the former arms export chief since killed in a car crash. Car crash, hummm? |
| Posted by: Steve 2002-09-25 11:10:27 |
| #1 Here it is: A transcript of the conversation analyzed by the United States and given to Reuters by a U.S. official cites a Jordanian -- an apparent reference to the reported presence in Ukraine of front companies seeking equipment for Saddam. "There is a need for a special operation. We were approached by Iraq through our Jordanian intermediary. They want to buy four Kolchuga stations and offer one hundred million dollars right away," Valery Malev, the former arms export chief since killed in a car crash, is quoted as saying. "What is Kolchuga?" Kuchma asks. "Kolchuga is a passive radar station manufactured by Topaz," Malev replies, referring to the manufacturer in the Ukrainian city of Donetsk. "Can you sell it without the Jordanian?" Kuchma is quoted as asking. Malev tells Kuchma another Ukrainian company ships its products in crates that could be used to transport the system. He adds: "Then, we will send our people there with forged passports to deploy the system and launch it." "Just watch that the Jordanian keeps his mouth shut... They can detect the shipment," Kycham is quoted as saying. "Who is going to detect it? We do not sell a lot there. I mean to Jordan," Malev replies. "OK. Go ahead," says Kuchma. The Kolchuga is a passive radar system that listens for rf emissions and tracks aircraft and ground targets without giving itself away. |
| Posted by: Steve 2002-09-25 11:08:03 |