Italian and Iraqi gun transaction on the black market by Ana Maria Ciobanu

It was a normal day at the Fiumicino Airport in Italy, Rome. The police was quietly digging through a traveler's checked baggage, looking for hidden drugs. They found a weapon catalogue instead, which turned out to be a clue to something bigger.Anti-Mafia investigators were helped by the airport police's discovery which led them down a trail of telephone and e-mail intercepts, into the midst of a huge black-market transaction.Iraqi and Italian partners were sending more than 100.000 Russian-made automatic weapons into the bloodbath of Iraq.The deal was worth $40 million.Everything is still unclear and a lot of questions have remained unanswered till now. Iraqi government officials were involved in the secret deal, without the knowledge of the U.S. Baghdad command.Why did these officials resort to the black market in Italy and where exactly were the weapons heading? We'll have to wait for the investigation to come up with some answers.Meanwhile, USA's plan to replace the Russian AK-47s with American M-16s will probably send more assault rifles onto the black market.Wouldn't everything be easier if the slaughter in Iraq would stop? Are we all the bad guys from cartoons that plan "world domination"?

by Ana Maria Ciobanu for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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