
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, February 10, 1991                   TAG: 9102070025
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: E-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: AL ROBERTS LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: NORFOLK                                LENGTH: Medium

ARMS SALES TO ENEMY STILL PAY

Although the U.S. has been at war with Iraq for nearly a month, it still has not found a way to stem the flow of arms and supplies to the enemy, according to government officials and private shippers.

Indeed, the U.S. government has been reluctant to curtail such shipments because it does not want to upset U.S. manufacturers. Stricter controls would delay most legitimate exports and snare only a few illicit ones, officials contend. Moreover, the government is particularly beholden to defense contractors, who have much to gain from arms sales to smaller countries.

"Let's face it, the United States sells arms to just about anybody," said Richard Levy of Gold Eagle Co. in Chicago, which over the past two years has shipped $1.5 million of brake fluid to Iraq.

And it moved to the Middle East through Virginia's port at Hampton Roads.

"It's like Don Quixote fighting windmills," Levy said. "If you think the big-money interests in this world are ever going to change, it's never going to happen."

In addition, there is a tangle of government bureaucracy overseeing maritime shipping. The U.S. Commerce Department, for example, promotes exports and writes regulations to control them. But the Treasury Department, which runs the Customs Service, enforces those rules. And when it comes to arms sales to foreigners, the State, Defense and Justice departments also get involved.

Complicating the bureaucratic tangle in policing U.S. shipments to hostile nations is the sheer volume of cargo that moves through American ports. In Hampton Roads alone as many as 1,000 containers per day pass from the docks to ship holds.

An examination of customs documents last month showed that in the two years prior to last August's embargo on Iraq, at least 30 shipments - legal or illicit - moved from Hampton Roads directly to Iraq. Hundreds more are believed to have been shipped through here to third countries, such as Germany or Austria, for later transfer to Iraq, officials said.

Through Hampton Roads, U.S. shippers reported sending tire-making machinery, electric generators and other heavy equipment to Iraqi government agencies.

Ironically, many of those shipments were carried aboard the Kuwaiti ship, Al Wattyah, which according to customs, has carried to Iraq everything from insecticide concentrate to mortuary equipment to truck tires. The Al Wattyah, which left port Jan. 25, carried another load of cargoes to the Mideast. And any of those apparently innocuous shipments, customs officials said, could have actually contained military hardware.

Although importers have to declare shipments before they arrive in U.S. ports, exporters routinely wait as many as four working days after they leave the country before reporting their cargoes.

Moreover, the agency's focus recently has been on drug imports rather than on illegal arms exports. Among Customs' 5,500 inspectors nationwide, for instance, the vast majority are assigned to inspect imports, leaving fewer than 200 to look over exports. Even in the throes of war, therefore, Customs can target inspections for only a few hundred of the roughly 40,000 exports leaving U.S. harbors, airports and border crossings every day.

"Our whole system is built around import cargo," said Dennis Murphy, Mid-Atlantic district director for Customs. "With export cargo, we just don't know what's out there. We may have some idea, in some cases, but there's a very remote possibility that we're going to catch a violation."

But the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait has caused Customs to pay unprecedented attention to arms exports. In the past six months, Customs has doubled its investigations of arms sales to Iraq from about 20 cases to more than 40 cases, officials said last week. Customs declined to talk about those ongoing investigations.

"We're still seeing American businessmen willing to sell arms to Saddam Hussein," said Murphy, the Norfolk Customs chief. "We ought to string 'em up."

"The system isn't designed to be enforced," Murphy said of export controls. "It's an honor system."

But honor systems work only when people are honest.

by CNB