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Iraq to spend 1.5 billion dollars on
weapons
22.5.2007
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May 22, 2007
BAGHDAD, Iraq, -- Iraq's defence ministry
will buy new weapons worth more than 1.5 billion
dollars (1.11 billion euros), including helicopters
and US rifles, the minister announced on Monday.
The purchases will be made possible by a 26 percent
increase in the country's defence budget, to 4.1
billion dollars (three billion euros) for the
current fiscal year.
"The Iraqi government has signed a contract with the
American government to set up a foreign weapons
sales office to buy weapons that Iraq needs,"
Defence Minister Abdel Qader Jassim Mohammed said at
a Baghdad press conference.
"This programme will help Iraq to buy modern weapons
and to ensure arrival of these weapons when the
ministry asks for them," he added.
Iraq has started importing American-made M-16 and
M-4 rifles, which are slowly replacing the
ubiquitous Soviet-designed AK-47 Kalashnikov among
the Iraqi forces struggling to bring order to the
country.
Mohammed is also looking to beef up the country's
air force and navy with the purchase of 29
Soviet-designed M-17 helicopters, six reconnaissance
planes, 10 patrol boats from Italy and 26 from the
United States.
The gradual switchover from the AK-47 to the M-16
began earlier this month, when a graduating class of
Iraqi military recruits became the first of 1,600
rookie soldiers to start receiving the weapons.
The M-16 fires a 5.56mm round, standard among most
modern armies and lighter than the 7.62mm used in
the rugged Kalashnikov.
Iraq is awash with Kalashnikovs looted from ousted
dictator Saddam Hussein's defunct armed forces,
smuggled from around the region by militants and
imported by the United States to arm new Iraqi
security units.
Many go missing from official stocks, but the new
generation of US-made weapons will be issued to
individual soldiers, whose photographs and biometric
data will be recorded next to their guns' serial
numbers to deter fraud.
AFP
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