Wikileaks add to suspicion M’sia involved in illegal arms sales to Iran
Corrupted Barisan Nasional
Three leaked Wikileaks cables expressed the US government’s displeasure and disgust with its Malaysian counterpart over the latter’s inaction when two missing Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) jet engines disappeared.
Is the Malaysian government involved in selling arms to Iran, in contravention of a UN-sponsored arms embargo? Did Malaysia use Uruguay as a transit point? Where is the intended final destination of the missing jet engines?
In November 2007, Uruguay’s President Tabare Vázquez and his delegation of 50 people, visited Malaysia. During this visit, a joint communique was issued, saying that the two countries could strengthen their cooperation in the field of peacekeeping training.
The first point to note is that our engines disappeared in late 2007.
No one is suggesting that the President Vázquez took the engines home in his presidential baggage allowance, but it is well known that Vázquez was embroiled in the ‘arms from Iran controversy’.
A few months earlier, in July 2007, Vázquez authorised his navy to pick up a “cargo” in Venezuela, three months after the U.N placed an arms embargo on Iran.
The loading of Iranian arms onto a Uruguayan Navy vessel visiting Venezuela, was in contravention of a UN-sponsored arms embargo and it provoked international comment. Internal controversy regarding this event was centred on protests to Vázquez’s Government from the Uruguayan opposition National Party
Uruguayan parliamentary investigators said they blocked an attempt by their government to purchase arms from Iran, using a diversion through Venezuela to try to evade U.N. sanctions on the Tehran government.
Uruguayan defence officials dismissed the incident as the result of “confusion.”
Thus, the second coincidence is the involvement of the controversial President who visited Malaysia in 2007.
The third coincidence is that our jet engines was eventually found in Uruguay.
More importantly, from 2000 to 2008, Malaysia’s Minister of Defence was Najib Abdul Razak.
Najib is now Prime Minister but there has been a furious debate about over-spending as well as the huge military build-up during his tenure in Mindef. Najib has been responsible for a variety of scandals whilst a Defence Minister.
So were the jet engines destined for their final unknown destination, most probably Iran, by using Uruguay as a transit point?
Was Najib embroiled in breaking the UN arms embargo of Iran?
Most people are aware that Iran’s status as a volatile Muslim nation means the country is experiencing difficulty obtaining spares because of a UN arms embargo
If Malaysia is not involved, then why did the Malaysian government only release details of the loss of the engines in late 2009, two years after the event? Our government claims it did not discover the loss until they had to overhaul the engines.
Of significance is that our government probably did not want the USA, which sold the engines to us in the first place, to know that we had broken the arms embargo.
Did the government try to bury this bad news – the disappearance of the jet engines – by overshadowing this loss with another more notable event?
Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, the defence minister, made public the loss of the jet engines on 19 December, 2009, on the same day as the first Pakatan Rakyat convention. Ahmad Zahid knew that the Pakatan event would overshadow the Ministry of Defence announcement.
If the Malaysian government refuses to be transparent with us, then Wikileaks will be our stop-gap measure for a semblance of transparency.
