NEW SERBIAN GOVERNMENT UNFREEZES ARMS EXPORTS TO ARMENIA
Danas, Belgrade
24 May 07
Report by Z. Radovanovic: "Arms and Military Equipment Are Headed
for Armenia"]
Kragujevac: Yesterday the management of Zastava Arms renewed its
demands to the authorized government institutions to issue them a
second permit for exporting arms and equipment to Armenia, which the
Kragujevac factory should receive in about 10 days.
Danas has learned that the Serbian Defence Ministry informed
the management of Zastava Arms that all the necessary permits
had been authorized for the export of the second shipment of
Zastava-manufactured weapons and equipment to Armenia, after which,
because of the obsoleteness of the first request, a new one was sent
to the authorities asking for permission to go through with the export
transaction. The people in Zastava Arms said that the permit for arms
exports to Armenia (a 900,000-dollar shipment) should arrive by late
May or early June.
"We will get the second permit for exporting weapons to Armenia
thanks to changes in the defence ministry’s views and to the fact
that now they evaluate that our arms shipment to Armenia’s security
forces would in no way damage relations between Serbia and Russia,
in other words, that it would not have a negative impact on Moscow’s
well known official stand toward the final solution to the status
of Kosovo and Metohija," the people in the Kragujevac factory told
us, emphasizing that last week even the Russian officials gave the
"green light" once again for the export of Serbian arms to Armenia.
Let us remind our readers that the Zastava Arms Factory made a deal
with the Armenian Defence Ministry in the middle part of last year
calling for the export of two shipments of weapons for that country
with a total value of 2.6m dollars. The problem occurred in the fall of
2006, just before this business deal was supposed to go through, when
the Serbian government placed a ban on the arms exports to countries of
the former USSR, which were, allegedly in Russia’s sphere of interest
because of "higher state and national interests," in connection with
the resolving of the status of Kosovo and Metohija. At the end of
last year, Zastava’s arms makers managed to work out getting one of
the two requested permits. The first export arrangement, worth about
1.7m dollars, was implemented in several phases and was concluded
in late April. "In our stockpiles we already have 80 per cent of the
merchandise necessary for exporting to the Armenian Defence Ministry,"
the people in the Zastava Arms Factory said, adding that there were
indications that in addition to exports, through the services of
the SDPR [Federal Directorate of Supply and Procurement] Jugoimport,
the state would also buy stockpiled weapons from Zastava Arms worth
1m dollars.
[Box] New rifle for the US market
Recently Zastava Arms, in cooperation with US Remington, has mastered
the production of the 22 LR Rifle. It is expected that the new type
of low calibre rifle, whose possibilities are being researched in
Remington, will be on the US market at the beginning of the second
half of 2007. Zastava Arms and Remington are working on organizing
the manufacture of some other products, mainly new hunting carbines,
which should be offered to US buyers in the course of next year.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
