WAR ON IRAK

Pravda: US blames its setbacks on outdated Russian weapons

American army reversals in pursing the Iraqi "Blitzkrieg" are mutely resented in Washington. The White House is looking for causes of its strategic and tactical blunders not in miscalculations when preparing the Shock and Awe operation, nor in the political and military underestimation of the defence capabilities of Baghdad and its forces, but, as is their wont in such cases, in secondary and tertiary circumstances, which, all of a sudden, if only for propaganda purposes, become the most salient and move almost to the foreground.

One of such circumstances was Russian weaponry used by Iraqi units. Last weekend the Russian Ambassador to the U.S., Yuri Ushakov, was summoned to the Department of State and handed a note of protest. The note claims that over the past year, Russian private companies have sold to Iraq anti-tank missiles and shells, night-vision devices and electronic equipment able to lead astray American aircraft, cruise and self-homing missiles. All these deals, the note asserts, were done in violation of UN sanctions.

"Such equipment may pose a direct threat to the Coalition's armed forces," says the protest note. "Russia has the last chance to stop supplies". Otherwise Washington would be compelled to take adequate measures.

And although, as claimed by news agencies, the note does not point a finger at concrete Russian defence firms breaching UN sanctions, some are named in the American Washington Post and the British Financial Times - Tula Design Office of Instrument Building (KBP) and Aviakonversia.

Aviakonversia designs and manufactures active jamming stations to suppress receivers of satellite navigational systems used by the Americans to guide cruise missiles and other high-precision weapons. Its director, Oleg Antonov, has said in a RIA Novosti interview that "we supplied no equipment to Iraq," and that "the Iraqis could develop such devices by their own efforts or purchase in third countries".