Iran violates UN curbs to send arms to Damascus
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Arab News - 01 July, 2012
http://gitm.kcorp.net/index.php?id=607190&news_type=Top&lang=en

A UN Security Council committee has published a report on Iranian sanctions
violations, including shipments of weapons to Syria in breach of a UN ban on
weapons exports by the Islamic Republic.

The Security Council has imposed four rounds of sanctions on Iran for
refusing to halt its nuclear enrichment program, which the United States,
European Union and their allies suspect is at the heart of a weapons
program. Iran rejects the allegation and refuses to halt what it says is a
peaceful energy program.

The report appeared on the committee website on Thursday, diplomats told
Reuters on Friday. The report said that Syria remains the top destination
for Iranian arms shipments.
Iran, like Russia, is one of Syria’s few allies as it presses ahead with a
16-month-old assault on opposition forces determined to oust Syrian
President Bashar Assad.

Western diplomats said they were pleased the report was made public.
Initially they said they feared Russia would block it as it did last year’s
report on Iran, which has yet to be made public due to Russian objections.

Publication of the report, the diplomats said, will likely add to the
pressure on Iran to comply with UN demands about curbing sensitive nuclear
activities as major powers press ahead with negotiations with the Islamic
Republic aimed at convincing it that defiance of international sanctions
will be too costly. The new report, submitted by a panel of
sanctions-monitoring experts to the Security Council’s Iran sanctions
committee, said the group investigated three large illegal shipments of
Iranian weapons over the past year.
“Iran has continued to defy the international community through illegal arms
shipments,” it stated.

“Two of these cases involved (Syria), as were the majority of cases
inspected by the Panel during its previous mandate, underscoring that Syria
continues to be the central party to illicit Iranian arms transfers,” the
report said. The third shipment involved rockets that Britain said last year
were headed for Taleban fighters in Afghanistan.

The kinds of arms that Iran was attempting to send to Syria before the
shipments were seized by Turkish authorities included assault rifles,
machine guns, explosives, detonators, 60mm and 120mm mortal shells and other
items, the panel said.

The most recent incident described in the report was an arms shipment
discovered in a truck that Turkey seized on its border with Syria in
February. Turkey announced last year that it was imposing an arms embargo on
Syria.
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