From Yahoo News (“Putin blasts US war in Iraq but says ready to consider debt relief”):
…Much of Iraq’s eight billion dollar debt to Moscow — including interest payments — is from military equipment that the Soviet Union delivered to Iraq in the 1980s when Saddam Hussein attacked Iran in a war that killed one million people on both sides and ended in a stand-off….But Moscow has been furious with Washington in recent days for barring countries that opposed the war on Iraq from taking part in the lucrative first phase of reconstruction projects for the country.
What is the source of the “lucrativeness”? Washington. In other words, Moscow is “furious” that it cannot get money from Washington.
…Only hours before Baker’s arrival, Putin used a live question-and-answer session with Russian television viewers to issue some of his most stinging criticism of the Iraqi war to date….”The use of force abroad, according to existing international laws, can only be sanctioned by the United Nations. This is the international law. Everything that is done without the UN Security Council’s sanction cannot be recognized as fair or justified,” said Putin…
Translation: The United States cannot kill Hitler, or his equivalent, without the permission of Hitler, and/or the other dictators of the world, i.e., Russia, China, Libya, etc. The U.N. is nothing more than a debating society to sanction and protect dictators.
[Putin] also suggested that the United States may be showing over-confidence on the international scene and warned that “empires” had fallen before from feeling too strong and using their military might indiscriminately.
Translation: Don’t you dare come after me. Don’t you dare!
His comments came days after Moscow warned Washington that its decision to hog Iraq reconstruction projects was “unacceptable” and began to waver on the issue of debt.
Translation: It is “acceptable” enough for us to think about negotiating on the debt.
….Moscow is owed 3.5 billion dollars in original debt and another 4.5 billion dollars in post-Soviet interest, according to the Paris Club. Russia is followed by France with three billion, Germany with 2.4 billion, the United States with 2.2 billion, and Italy with 1.7 billion. Japan is the Club’s largest Iraqi donor and is owed 4.1 billion dollars.
Any nation that sold weapons to Saddam’s Iraq has to take up those payments with Saddam. In other words: any country, company, or individual that voluntarily supports a dictatorship deserves to lose their “investment.”
From the Dissident Frogman (chart edited by Cap Mag):
[Chart Source. Data source used to produce chart: Iraq arms trade, SIPRI projects. Chart title changed to reflect that data from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute only goes up to 1990. So the chart does not show any illegal sales (illegal due to UN sanctions) made to Iraq after 1990.]