Gates: US arms control laws slow sales to allies
Source: Reuters
(Adds Pentagon comments, paragraphs 9-10) By Kristin Roberts SANTIAGO, Oct 4 (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Thursday that U.S. laws impede the government's ability to provide weapons quickly to Iraq and other allies but he was not concerned that Iraq had ordered arms from China. "I don't have any particular concern that the Iraqis bought from China," he said. The Washington Post reported Iraqi President Jalal Talabani as saying Iraq had ordered light military equipment from China worth $100 million because the United States was unable to meet its requirements. The Defense Department is looking for ways to accelerate weapons sales, said Gates, on a trip to Latin America. The U.S. Foreign Military Sales program is not structured to provide weapons in an emergency or in a short time span, he said. "This is a concern for us and it's something we have to devote some attention to," he told reporters in Chile. "We are looking into ways in which we can abbreviate or accelerate the process by which we provide weapons under the FMS programs to Iraq," he said. U.S. arms control and foreign assistance laws authorize the Defense Department's Foreign Military Sales program. The State Department identifies which countries are eligible and the Defense Department executes the program. Gates said Iraq first requested weapons in January and the United States had provided Iraq with more than $600 million worth of arms. Another $2 billion to $3 billion worth of weapons is under order, he said. But Iraqi officials have repeatedly complained that the United States was moving too slowly. At the Pentagon, officials said some weaponry for Iraqi forces was bound to come from countries other than the United States. "There are some things for which we have an industrial base and other things that we don't," spokesman Bryan Whitman said. For example, AK-47 assault rifles, used by the Iraqi police, are not made in the United States, officials said. (Additional reporting by Andrew Gray in Washington)
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