Argentina's Menem, who has ties to Syria (who back Hezbollah) had been asked by the Clinton Administration to break the UN embargo for the Former Yugoslavia in support of covert American operations on behalf of the Bosnian Muslims. The operation ran weapons mostly of Iranian origin through Croatia to the Bosnian Muslims who are allied with al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups like Iranian and Syrian backed Hezbollah. Croatia (an old WW2 Nazi ally to the Peronistas) kept a percentage of the smuggled weapons as a transit fee. It seems the jihadis (at around this time the Indian govt. reported an alliance had been brokered between al-Qaeda, Iran, Hezbollah and other jihadist groups) used the Argentine arms smuggling network to do what it does best, it used access to Argentina to carry out terror attacks that fell on Argentinian Jews. The Argentinian bombings remain unsolved.
Argentina's Menem to be freed in arms case (Clinton used him to smuggle arms to Bosnian Muslims)
This week, Menem, who was placed under house arrest because he is 70, was supposed to be honeymooning in his parents' native Syria with his second wife, Cecilia Bolocco.
In statements last weekend, Menem seemed to indicate that if such a deal had happened with Croatia, it happened with the knowledge of the State Department. A Washington Post article in 1996 outlined U.S. knowledge of arms smuggling to Croatia from countries that included Argentina. However, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher denied Monday that Washington had prior knowledge or gave support to any Argentine weapons deal with Croatia.