Posted on 10/24/2002 1:01:19 PM PDT by knak
RIJEKA, Croatia (Reuters) - A ship seized at sea by Croatia this week was bound for Iraq from Yugoslavia carrying what appeared to be material used in the ignition of Scud missiles, according to sources in Croatia on Thursday.
"There is evidence that the military equipment on the seized ship was headed for Iraq," a police source told Reuters after 14 containers were unloaded from the freighter Boka Star in the port of Rijeka on Croatia's Adriatic coast.
Another source close to the investigation said there were "four containers opened so far containing a powdered substance we believe is used for the ignition of Scud missiles."
The source said the substance had been examined by experts, but did not state its chemical name or composition.
The Boka Star was netted with the help of the United States and NATO allies who on Tuesday exposed clandestine arms supplies to Iraq from the Bosnian Serb Republic, with the aid of Yugoslav officials in Belgrade.
Official statements did not disclose the nature of the military equipment being smuggled.
Unofficial sources agreed it was most probably engines or engine parts for Iraq's aging fleet of Soviet-era MiG-21 fighters, made at Bosnia's Orao plant -- a supposition never formally denied.
A Western military source familiar with the case on Thursday questioned whether the material found in the search of the ship would indeed turn out to be linked to Iraq's Scuds, but reserved judgement on the report.
FOREIGN FLAG
Iraq fired 39 of the liquid-fueled, medium-range missiles at Israel and allied Gulf states during the 1991 Gulf War, sowing fears that they might carry chemical or biological warheads.
Iraq in fact used only conventional explosives and damage was limited. But U.S. aircraft and anti-missile systems totally failed to stop the Soviet-designed Scuds.
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is thought to have only a dozen or two of the mobile rockets left in his arsenal.
But their potential threat is enough for Washington to have promised Israel this week that it would deploy special forces in Western Iraq at the outset of any war to destroy the missiles, according to a Washington Post report.
The Tonga-registered Boka Star had started its voyage on Monday from the port of Bar in the Yugoslav republic of Montenegro, which borders Bosnia, and was intercepted with the help of NATO intelligence.
"The Boka Star sailed out of the port of Bar a few days ago," Branko Koprivica, captain of the port, told Reuters in the Montenegrin capital, Podgorica, on Thursday. He said it had a Montenegrin crew but a foreign flag.
Western sources had hinted at a link between Bar and the Orao company implicated in the arms smuggling scandal.
Both Yugoslav and Bosnian Serb authorities this week acknowledged arms embargo violations and fired senior officials but without disclosing details of what was being smuggled.
Tuesday's orchestrated, and embarrassing, exposes by the NATO allies appear to have been provoked after U.S. charges leveled at Orao a month ago were ignored, and plans for covert shipments were continuing.
One Western source said this week's seizure "was not the first time" such a shipment had been intercepted at sea.
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