BELGRADE - Serbia's main arms exporter Sunday denied a report that Belgrade acted secretively in a deal to sell weapons to Iraq so Iraqi officials would avoid corruption charges, a news agency reported.
"All the Iraqi officials were informed of the contracts signed with us," said Stevan Nikcevic, head of the company Jugoimport-SDPR, quoted by the Tanjug agency.
His statement followed a report by the New York Times Saturday that Iraq and Serbia had signed the 833-million-dollar deal behind the United States' back to shield Iraqi officials from anti-corruption rules that would apply to a US contract.
Nikcevic rejected the newspaper's report that the September deal had also been signed without the knowledge of senior Iraqi leaders.
"These contracts were confirmed several times, according to our information, by the Iraqi authorities," Nikcevic said.
The deal was largely negotiated by Iraq's Defence Minister Abdul Qadir and Planning Minister Ali Glahil Baban, and covered the sale of helicopters, planes, armored personnel carriers, firearms and other equipment, the newspaper said.
The Jugoimport-SDPR chief said the gear had not yet been delivered.
"Reports of dissatisfaction with the quality (of the arms) are not true, because we have not yet exported any equipment," he added, responding to criticism by US military officials cited in the newspaper.
"Personally I think that someone is unhappy that he wasn't included in this job and cannot quietly accept that the Serbian arms industry is good-quality, competent and competitive."
mat/rlp/gk
04/13/2008 19:26 GMT