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UNSCOM and Revealing Company Names



>does anyone know of a 1993 agreement between rolf >ekeus/unscom/companies which supplied chem and 
>bio weapons to >iraq, agreeing that unscom would keep companies names out of >the equation to 
>preserve commercial confidentiality

Any UNSCOM/UN Security Council decision to not publicize company names probably had more do with 
the 1980-1990 Iraq-related export and foreign policies of the States in which these companies 
were/are based than with commercial confidentiality.  To see why, it is important to know which 
States were involved and then to compare those State names with the names of States who seemed to 
pursue through Security Council resolutions Iraq's non-conventional disarmament.

Cole, Leonard A., "The Eleventh Plague: The Politics of  Biological and Chemical Warfare," (New 
York:  W.H. Freeman, 1997), pg. 82, cites Kenneth R. Timmerman, "The Poison Gas Connection," Simon 
Wiesenthal Center, Los Angeles, 1990, pg. 46 which listed "207 firms in 21 countries that provided 
supplies for Iraq's unconventional weapons program.  Transactions continued through the Iran-Iraq 
war and after."  According to Cole, (pg. 82) the Timmerman study (pg. 46) makes the following 
sample corporate breakdown:

Federal Republic of Germany [former West Germany]: 86 companies
U.S.:  18 companies (including Hewlett Packard [Timmerman, pg. 52])
UK:  18 companies
Austria:  17 companies
France:  16 companies
Italy:  12 companies
Switzerland:  11 companies

If you would like an MS Word attachment detailing, year-by-year, relevant U.S.-Iraq commercial, 
diplomatic, and military relations, please let me know. 

For more details about how Iraq was non-conventionally armed, please also see:

Jentleson, Bruce, W., "With Friends Like These: Reagan, Bush, and Saddam, 1982-1990," (New York: 
W.W. Norton, 1994)

Mark Phythian, "Arming Iraq: How the U.S. and Britain Secretly Built Saddam’s War Machine," 
(Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997)

Timmerman, Kenneth R., "The Death Lobby: How the West Armed Iraq," (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 
1991)

Best regards,

Nathaniel Hurd
Boston, USA
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