Word: clustering
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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...brochures apparently made the sale for him. Sometime later, Cardoen was contacted by Iraqi army officers, who were interested in one of the weapons listed in his sales kit: the cluster bomb, a destructive antipersonnel device that scatters tiny bomblets over a wide area. The weapon was ideal for Iraq's relatively unskilled air force, especially after Iran began attacking Iraqi positions with human waves of fanatical young fighters...
Since the early 1980s, Cardoen has sold Iraq thousands of cluster bombs and other explosives, as well as such weapons-related technology as computer- operated metal lathes. Iraq in turn has helped make Cardoen, 48, one of the richest men in Chile; his firm, Cardoen Industries, has grossed $400 million from the cluster bombs alone. No wonder that until recently, Cardoen kept President Saddam Hussein's portrait hanging in a place of honor in his Santiago factory...
Cardoen makes no apologies for helping arm Iraqi soldiers, even though the cluster-bomb factory he built on the outskirts of Baghdad is no doubt spitting out weapons that might be used against the multinational alliance arrayed against Saddam in the Persian Gulf. Cardoen rationalizes his position by explaining that he began selling Saddam arms "when Iraq was considered a friend of the West who was fighting the Ayatullah ((Khomeini...
...regimes like Chile's and Iraq's, Cardoen has no qualms about dealing with other pariahs. He has helped South African arms companies circumvent a global embargo by putting MADE IN CHILE labels on some of their weapons as part of co-production deals. His most recent customer for cluster bombs has been the repressive regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam in Ethiopia. In September 1989 Cardoen received his government's permission to sell Ethiopia up to 1,658 of the devices, at $7,000 apiece; the bombs have reportedly been used against civilians in separatist Eritrea...
...Ethiopian deal was arranged, Cardoen says, through "third parties," whom he does not name but who have been identified by one of his employees as Israelis. Rumors have been circulating for months in Washington and the Middle East that Israel provided cluster bombs and other military aid to Mengistu in exchange for exit visas for Ethiopian Jews. Jerusalem, however, vehemently denies any involvement in Cardoen's Ethiopian deal...