Agence France-Presse,
Washington (AFP): Iraq is buying 100 million dollars of light military equipment for its police from China because the US cannot provide the materiel, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani told the Washington Post's Thursday edition.
“The capacity of the factories here are not enough to provide us quickly with all that we need, even for the army. One of our demands is to accelerate the delivery of the arms to the Iraqi army,” Talabani said.
The Iraqi leader gave the interview to the US newspaper Wednesday while he was in Washington for talks with President George W. Bush.
According to Talabani, “only one in five Iraqi police officers is armed,” the Post reported.
It said he called for “faster weapons delivery from the United States” to beef up Iraq's fledgling army.
The Post said the deal with China has raised concerns among US military analysts because Iraq's security forces already cannot account for some 190,000 weapons already provided by the United States, including 110,000 AK-47 assault rifles supplied in 2004-2005.
US officials fear some of the arms have made their way into the hands of insurgents, who are believed to have widely infiltrated police ranks.
“The problem is that the Iraqi government doesn't have — as yet — a clear plan for making sure that weapons are distributed, that they are properly monitored and repeatedly checked,” Rachel Stohl of the Center for Defense Information think-tank told the newspaper.
An anonymous Bush administration official acknowledged the problem to the Post, saying “We're working hard just to supply our own troops.”
“Our factories are working for our own troops. So it's true we don't have the ability to provide these rifles and other equipment they're looking for.”
