World

U.S., Russia To Talk Iran Arms

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

November 22, 2000 / 4:51 PM EST / CBS

U.S. officials will travel to Moscow next week to discuss Russia's plan to break an agreement barring the sale of conventional arms to Iran, State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said Monday.

Russia recently notified Secretary of State Madeleine Albright that it will no longer observe a 1995 pledge — made by then-Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin to Vice President Al Gore — that it would not sell tanks and battlefield weapons to Iran.

Moscow shows no sign of a change of heart on scrapping the arrangement and sanctions will be considered, though in many cases actual transfers of weapons must occur for sanctions to apply, another State Department official said.

"We do not believe activities have occurred that would constitute a withdrawal" from the arrangement, the official said.

Reeker said Albright brought up the agreement with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov on the eve of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe ministerial council in Vienna Sunday.

Ivanov insisted Saturday that his country has not yet signed any new arms contracts with Iran.

"It seems to me that the topic is too exaggerated now and there is too much unnecessary passion around it. In fact, nothing serious has happened," Ivanov said in an interview with Russia's state-run RTR television from Berlin, where he was attending a conference.

"No one has signed any contracts with Iran," he said. "The issue is that Russia, when it comes to military cooperation with Iran as well as with other countries, does not consider itself constrained by any special obligations in spheres which are not restricted by international obligations."

The Russian Defense Ministry insists it will not supply any hardware capable of delivering weapons of mass destruction. But the White House opposes any arms sales to Iran and is trying to get Moscow to change its mind, threatening sanctions against Russia, a U.S. official said.

Washington has repeatedly accused Russian scientific institutes of selling missile technology to Iran or helping Iran develop weapons by teaching Iranian students.

Russia this month overhauled its arms export structures to try to boost revenues from frozen contracts and possible expansion into big new deals.

Tehran is interested in assembling Russian hardware under license, like the MiG-29 fighter and T-72C tank.

U.S. officials say Washington will consider sanctions if Moscow actually resumes selling advanced technology to Tehran, which is a paymaster of the Shi'ite Muslim Hizbollah group that violently opposes existing Israeli-Palestinian agreements.

Though U.S.-Iranian relations have thawed since the election of reformist President Mohammad Khatami, Tehran remains on a list of seven state sponsors of terrorism with Cuba, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria.

The Gore-Chernomyrdin deal let Moscow honor existing contracts for arms too unsophisticated to qualify for sanctions under a 199U.S. law, as long as all conventional arms sales stopped by the end of 1999, the official added.

Republican critics of the pact focus on the fact that it let Moscow fulfill contracts already signed for delivery of hardware including a submarine, torpedoes and tanks to a country which gives financial aid to Hizbollah.

In the Senate, the critics tried but failed to get enough votes to subpoena the State Department to force it to hand over documents about the arrangement in the run-up to the election.

Democrats saw this as an attempt by supporters of Texas Gov. George W. Bush to embarrass Gore, having already accused him and others of ignoring signs of corruption as they poured funds into Russia.

Democrats say the deal addressed the wider issue of getting Moscow to commit to ending arms sales by a set date.