Russia denies involvement in Iraq weapons (Agencies ) Updated: 2004-10-28 21:49 Russia angrily denied
allegations Thursday that Russian forces had smuggled a cache of high explosives
out of Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion in
March 2003.
Defense Ministry spokesman Vyacheslav Sedov
dismissed the allegations as "absurd" and "ridiculous."
"I can state officially that the Russian Defense Ministry and its structures
couldn't have been involved in the disappearance of the explosives, because all
Russian military experts left Iraq when the international sanctions were
introduced during the 1991 Gulf War," he told The Associated Press.
The denial followed a story in The Washington Times on Thursday that quoted a
high-ranking U.S. defense official alleging that Russian special forces had
"almost certainly" helped spirit out the hundreds of tons of high explosives
that went missing from the al-Qaqaa base. The newspaper based its report on an
interview with John Shaw, the deputy U.S. undersecretary of defense for
international technology security.
Two weeks ago, Iraqi officials told the U.N. International Atomic Energy
Agency that 377 tons of explosives had vanished as a result of "theft and
looting ... due to lack of security." The compounds, HMX and RDX, are key
components in plastic explosives, which insurgents in Iraq have used in bomb
attacks.
Russia' charge d'affaires in Iraq, Ilya Morgunov, also denied the report.
"I didn't hear about any weapons to be taken out," Interfax quoted him as
saying. "Moreover, there was nobody to take them out, because we actually
evacuated all of our personnel."
He said there had been no Russian special forces in Iraq, only civilian
specialists working for foreign firms.
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