U.S. checks into report of Ukraine sale to Iraq

Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Elizabeth Jones shake hands Tuesday in Kiev, Ukraine.

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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Bush administration is planning to send experts to Ukraine to investigate U.S. suspicions that Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma approved the sale of a new type of aircraft tracking system to Iraq, a State Department official said Wednesday.

A senior administration official said the system, which does not emit a pulse like traditional radar, is "very sophisticated" and "should not be in the hands of Iraq."

Last week, the Bush administration suspended $55 million in aid to Ukraine because of the suspicions, and senior administration officials have told CNN that more action could follow unless Washington receives a full accounting of any sales to Iraq.

The officials said U.S. statutes and United Nations resolutions are being reviewed to see if further action should be taken against Kiev.

Although reports of the sale to Baghdad have been around for some time, the United States is basing its judgment on analysis of a July 2000 recording that concludes Kuchma can be heard approving the sale of "Kolchuga" early warning systems to Iraq.

The tape, which the State Department says is believed to be authentic, was given to Washington by Kuchma's former bodyguard, Mykola Melnichenko, and has prompted the United States to re-examine U.S. policy toward Ukraine, and in particular toward President Kuchma.

The State Department's top official on European Affairs, Assistant Secretary Beth Jones, just returned from a trip to Kiev, where Kuchma pledged cooperation with the investigation. The State Department told CNN that Kiev this week supplied the United States with documents said to be related to the alleged sale.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Tuesday that Jones had "serious discussions," and "made quite clear that this was an important matter" to the Bush administration.

"Assistant Secretary Jones pressed the seriousness with which we view these ... this evidence of approval of the sale of Kolchuga radars to Iraq," Boucher said. "She made clear the need to get to the bottom of the matter through an open and transparent investigation.

He added that while Kuchma's spokesman maintained "the transfer of the sale didn't occur ... President Kuchma did agree to an investigation by experts and to provide information and to support that investigation."

Boucher said such an investigation would "look in to the circumstances of the procurement effort by the Iraqis, the nature of the equipment, what transfers did or did not occur."

U.S. officials say the system uses multiple sites to passively receive aircraft signals, such as communications from warplanes. The sites then feed location information to a central computer. Key to such a system is having computers and weapons guidance fast enough to accurately aim any ground fire.

Referring to the sale, "We want to know what happened and how it happened," Boucher said. "But what also matters to us is the degree of cooperation we get, the degree of transparency we get, and the degree of commitment we get towards avoiding a repetition.

"What it means is there could also be other leaks in the [United Nations] sanctions," he said.

The issue of weapons sales to Iraq in the face of U.N. sanctions has long been a sore spot in U.S.-Ukrainian relations. Boucher said the matter has been repeatedly raised with the Kuchma government "to ensure that they protected against sales and made sure that no sales were made despite Iraq's attempts to procure military equipment."

The suspended aid to Ukraine's central government, nearly $55 million for fiscal year 2002, makes up 35 percent of U.S. aid to the country. The cutoff affects programs funded under the Freedom Support Act, which include work with the Ukrainian government on political and fiscal reform.

But it does not affect the bulk of U.S. assistance to Ukraine -- most of which goes to the private sector, nongovernmental organizations, small businesses and local government entities.

U.S. military and nonproliferation assistance to Ukraine will also be unaffected.

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