Doug Henwood wrote:
> [Right-wing paranoia? Lobbying by arms contractors?]
>
> SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
> ISSUE 1360 Sunday 14 February 1999
>
> Revealed: Russia's secret deal to re-arm Saddam
> By Con Coughlin, Foreign Editor
Con Coughlin is an interesting reporter. He did a lot of work on the PAN-AM 103 case and the farce that passed for a trial of Manzir-al Kassar in Spain (Kassar was acquitted on charges running the gamut from arms&drug dealing to murder, under pressure fromt eh Bush administration as Coughlin reported). Kassar was Oliver North's Middle Eastern contact in the Iran-Contra deals, the man behind the Achille Lauro highjacking(ironic since the Lauro hijacking made North's name as a cowboy) and PAN-AM 103 as well as big time arms trafficker and heroin smuggler. He's Syrian. I wonder what Coughlin's sources are. If he is right winger, he's got guts. " ...Manzir al-Kassar, a Syrian arms dealer and drug trafficker supplied North's operation with 1.5 million dollars worth of East bloc weapons...al-Kassar sold weapons to the PLO faction responsible for the Achille Lauro hijacking and to Abu Nidal mastermind of the Rome and Vienna airport massacres in December 1985...Kassar has been connected to major deals 'involving up to 220lbs of heroin...a report prepared by a private invetigator( for an insurance company SP) for Pan-Am alleges that al-Kassar used his relationship with the CIA to help smuggle the bomb aboard the plane." Scott and Marshall, Cocaine Politics, p16,196. Quite a guy. SP
>
>
> RUSSIA has signed arms deals worth more than £100 million with Saddam