Weapons orders to Iraq slow, Gates says

SANTIAGO, Chile - The United States must deliver weapons to Iraq more quickly, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said yesterday after an announcement that the Iraqis have ordered $100 million in military equipment from China.

The US military is concerned that it is harder to track weapons purchased from countries other than America. In many cases, the Iraqis cannot account for arms flowing into the country, which often end up in the hands of insurgents.

Speaking to reporters, Gates said the issue of slow foreign military sales also arose at his meeting with Chilean Defense Minister Jose Mario Goni just before a news conference.

"This is an issue that we have to look into and see what we can do in the United States to be more responsive and be able to react more quickly to the requests of our friends," he said. "Unfortunately the [foreign military sales] program was set up in a way that was not intended to provide sort of emergency or short-term supplies, as in the case of Iraq, and we're trying to figure out how to do that better."

The Washington Post reported yesterday that Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said Iraq ordered the Chinese military equipment for its police force in part because the United States is not delivering the arms fast enough.

Gates said he is not worried that the Iraqis turned to China to get the equipment, but is more generally concerned about the slow pace of the US process. He said the US has already delivered about $600 million worth of equipment to the Iraqis, and has $2 billion to $3 billion on order.

The Defense Department and the agency that handles foreign military sales, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, have been working for more than a year to speed up the process, said Major General Richard J. Sherlock Jr., director of operational planning for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

It averages about five months from the time they get a precise list of what the Iraqis want to the time it is fielded, he told a Pentagon press conference.

"It depends on what equipment is being requested, it depends on whether it's in production, whether it needs to be placed in production, whether there's another claimant for those pieces of equipment that are in production, or whether that equipment's on the shelf," Sherlock said.

Gates said the United States has opened offices in Baghdad for the military sales so officials can have day-to-day dialogues with the Iraqis and "get their requirements more quickly and get them processed more quickly."