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Posted on 10/04/2003 10:53:42 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
Poland: French Missile Report Was Wrong By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:43 p.m. ET
WARSAW, Poland (AP) -- After a protest from French President Jacques Chirac, Poland said Saturday it had been mistaken in reporting that its troops found new French-made anti-aircraft misiles in central Iraq.
Chirac swiftly denied selling Iraq weapons in violation of the U.N. weapons embargo against Saddam Hussein's regime. The claims, he said, ``are as false today as they were yesterday.''
An aide to the Polish prime minister said an initial report that the Roland missiles found by Polish troops days ago were produced in 2003 was incorrect. France said it stopped producing any type of Roland missile in 1993.
Prime Minister Leszek Miller met with Chirac twice to explain the mistake, said the aide, Tadeusz Iwinski. The two leaders were in Rome on Saturday for a European Union summit.
``There can be no 2003 missiles since these missiles have not been made for 15 years,'' Chirac told reporters in Rome. ``Polish soldiers confused things. I told ... Miller so frankly -- friendly but firmly.''
``It was wrongly said that the rockets were produced in that year,'' Iwinski said by telephone from the summit. ``The matter is cleared up now. President Chirac has accepted Prime Minister Leszek Miller's explanation.''
The Polish defense minister, Jerzy Szmajdzinski, ``expressed his regrets'' for the mistake, a ministry statement said.
The report first came in a statement by a ministry spokesman to Polish state television that the troops uncovered French-made Roland missiles in the town of Hilla, in the zone of central Iraq where the Poles lead a peacekeeping force. A ministry statement said the missiles were destroyed on Wednesday.
Since Saddam's fall in April, U.S. troops and journalists have seen Roland missiles at some weapons sites. France long had close ties to Iraq that included lucrative weapons deals.
Paris supplied arms, in exchange for oil, during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. The French Foreign Ministry statement Saturday said that Roland 1 missiles and their launchers were exported to Iraq in 1980-81, whole Roland 2 missiles were exported for three years, from 1983 to 1986. France stopped making Roland 2s in 1988 and Roland 3s in 1993, it said.
The French ministry emphasized that France has not authorized the sale of weapons, or even spare parts, to Iraq since after July 1990. The United Nations imposed sanctions on weapons sales to Iraq after Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
The Polish Defense Ministry said the Roland missiles were among about a dozen missiles uncovered near Hilla on Tuesday, including Soviet-made Malutka, French Hot and French-German Milan missiles. The Roland missilesa re about 25 feet long, radar-guided and launched from the back of a truck.
The U.S. military found 35 Roland missiles when it captured Baghdad International Airport in April. Roland missiles also were found when Australian troops captured an airfield in western Iraq.
The Web site GlobalSecurity.org says the Roland weapon system is intended for anti-aircraft defense of armored and mechanized the units to counter aircraft flying to nearly at 1 1/2 times the speed of sound or hovering helicopters.
The United States stopped producing the Roland-type weapon in 1981.
I'm not sure if that is such a bad thing or not...
The number is correct. You have to realize that the French are 10 years ahead of the rest of the world....just ask them. However, I'm not an expert on time. You might want to ask Gen Ashley Clark.
...
``There can be no 2003 missiles since these missiles have not been made for 15 years,'' Chirac told reporters in Rome. ``Polish soldiers confused things. I told ... Miller so frankly -- friendly but firmly.''
Those two statements don't really contradict each other. They just prove that we are really in the year 2008. Those "new" missiles from 2003 are five years old, so it's no big deal.
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