CBS) Russian diplomats who came under fire while trying to flee Iraq entered Syria on Monday, after leaving behind an injured diplomat in an Iraqi-controlled hospital, the Foreign Ministry said.

It was unclear whether U.S. or Iraqi forces were responsible for the attack Sunday.

Nine Russian diplomats, including Ambassador Vladimir Titorenko, left the Iraqi city of Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, on Monday en route to Syria, where a medically-equipped Russian plane was headed to bring them back to Moscow.

Syrian border officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the delegation from the Russian Embassy in Baghdad crossed the Tanef crossing point on the Syrian-Iraqi border. Tanef is 187 miles northeast of Damascus.

One diplomat injured in the attack was left behind in a Fallujah hospital, Alexander Yakovenko, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, told Russia's NTV television. Another diplomat also stayed behind to help the injured Russian, who underwent surgery in the Iraqi hospital, Yakovenko said. Others among the 23 diplomats and journalists in the convoy traveled to the Jordanian border on Sunday.

The Russian convoy was fired upon as it headed out of Baghdad toward the Syrian border, injuring at least four. A journalist in the convoy said it was caught in crossfire while passing Iraqi positions near the city's outskirts.

Alexander Minakov of state-run Rossiya television said it appeared that the U.S. forces had fired first, unleashing a heavy barrage on the Iraqi positions, and the two sides then exchanged fire.

The United States had been aware of the Russian diplomats' evacuation plans, and the convoy was flying a Russian flag.

Yakovenko did not comment on Russian media reports that bullet holes in the vehicle and a bullet removed from an injured diplomat matched the caliber of bullets from an American M-16 rifle.

He said Russia had not yet received any official information from either side, and was awaiting their conclusions.

Russian President Vladimir Putin instructed Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov on Monday to keep him informed of the convoy's movements and the status of the injured, Russian news agencies reported.

Dmitri Rogozin, head of the lower house of parliament's international affairs committee, suggested that Russia should have evacuated its diplomats from Baghdad earlier. Russia, which firmly opposes the war, had been reluctant to close its embassy, and announced the decision to evacuate the ambassador only Saturday.

The evacuation came three days after Russia alleged that American airstrikes had targeted a Baghdad neighborhood where the Russian Embassy is located.

"Clearly there was a desire to have full and objective information about developments in Iraq," Rogozin was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying. "In this case, it would have probably been sufficient to keep a smaller group of diplomats and not leave the ambassador until the last moment, because he is a political representative of the country, after all."

In spite of Russia's opposition to the war, Putin has adopted a softer tone toward the United States in recent days, saying a U.S. defeat would not be in Russia's interests and pledging continued cooperation with Washington.

U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was in Moscow for talks Monday on deepening U.S.-Russian cooperation.

U.S. Says Russian Engineers Aided Iraq's Missile Program

By James Risen

The New York Times -- WASHINGTON

A group of Russian engineers secretly aided Saddam Hussein's long-range ballistic missile program, providing technical assistance for prohibited Iraqi weapons projects even in the years just before the war that ousted him from power, American government officials say.

Iraqis who were involved in the missile work told American investigators that the technicians had not been working for the Russian government, but for a private company. But any such work on Iraq's banned missiles would have violated U.N. sanctions, even as the U.N. Security Council sought to enforce them.

Although Iraq ultimately failed to develop and produce long-range ballistic missiles and though even its permitted short-range missile projects were fraught with problems, its missile program is now seen as the main prohibited weapons effort that Iraq continued right up until the war was imminent.

After the first Persian Gulf war in 1991, Iraq was allowed only to keep crude missiles that could travel up to 150 kilometers, or about 90 miles, but the Russian engineers were assisting Baghdad's secret efforts illegally to develop longer-range missiles, according to the American officials.

Since the invasion in March, American investigators have discovered that the Russian engineers had worked on the Iraqi program both in Moscow and in Baghdad, and that some of them were in the Iraqi capital as recently as 2001, according to people familiar with the intelligence on the matter.

Because some of the Russian experts were said to have formerly worked for one of Russia's aerospace design centers, which remains closely associated with the state, their work for Iraq has raised questions in Washington about whether Russian government officials knew of their involvement in forbidden missile programs. “Did the Russians really not know what they were doing?” asked one person familiar with the U.S. intelligence reports.

"The U.S. has not presented any evidence of Russian involvement," said Yevgeny Khorishko, a spokesman for the Russian Embassy.

Russia and the former Soviet Union were among Iraq's main suppliers of arms for decades before Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, leading to the first gulf war.

The Bush administration has previously said it had uncovered evidence that Iraq had unsuccessfully sought help from North Korea for its missile program, but had not disclosed the evidence that Iraq had also received Russian technical support.

CIA and White House officials refused to comment on the matter, and people familiar with the intelligence say they believe that the administration has been reluctant to reveal what it knows about Moscow's involvement in order to avoid harming relations with President Vladimir V. Putin.

"They are hyper-cautious about confronting Putin on this," complained one intelligence source.

In his public testimony last week about the worldwide threats facing the United States, George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, restated Washington's longstanding concerns about Russia's controls over its missile and weapons technology, without mentioning the evidence of missile support for the Saddam government.

This story was published on Friday, March 5, 2004.
Volume 124, Number 10

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.