AFP, WASHINGTON: Russian engineers secretly helped Iraq's long-range missile program in the years leading up to last year's Iraq War, in violation of a UN ban, The New York Times said Friday quoting US officials.
The Iraq Survey Group, the US team looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, also found that Iraq had received assistance from sources in Belarus, Serbia and Ukraine, the US officials said.
Some of the Russian engineers helping Iraq are former employees of one of Russia's aerospace design centers closely associated with the Russian government, raising questions about Moscow's awareness of their involvement in banned activities, people familiar with US intelligence told the daily.
Although the United States discovered the Russian engineers' activities after it invaded Iraq a year ago, it chose to keep it secret for fear of harming relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the sources said.
“They are hyper-cautious about confronting Putin on this,” the daily said one intelligence source complained.
Yevgeny Khorishko, a spokesman for the Russian embassy in Washington, denied any knowledge of the allegations and told the daily: “The US has not presented any evidence of Russian involvement” in Iraq's missile program.
One official told The New York Times that the Russian engineers worked on the Iraqi missile program both in Moscow and in Baghdad and that some of them were in the Iraqi capital as recently as 2001.
After the US-led Gulf War in 1991 that liberated Kuwait from Iraqi occupation, the United Nations allowed Iraq to keep short-range missiles of about 150-kilometers (90-mile) range, but banned more menacing, long-range missile develpment.
In its post-Iraq War investigation, the Iraq Survey Group found that Iraq's covert long-range missile development program, its main prohibited weapons effort up to last year's war, was poorly organized and ultimately unsuccessful.
In its preliminary report issued in October, the group said Iraq had been receiving “foreign assistance” for its secret missile program, but only listed North Korea.
