U.S. Wants to Know How Israeli Arms Ended Up in Hands of Drug Traffickers

The United States expressed concern Monday about a recent Israeli arms delivery to Antigua that ended up in the hands of Colombian drug traffickers.

The original delivery of Uzi submachine guns and Galil assault rifles and ammunition was made to the Caribbean island, where opponents of then Panamanian President Manuel Antonio Noriega were being trained for a possible coup.

The weapons, purchased in March 1989 from Israel Military Industries for $42,000, were discovered in February on a ranch formerly owned by Jose Rodriguez Gacha, a major Colombian cocaine dealer who was killed by police in December. The value of the weapons has been estimated at $200,000.

Colombian police reportedly found 232 Israeli-made weapons, including rifles, shoulder-fired rocket launchers and infrared nightscopes.

“We do not know how these weapons ended up in the hands of the Rodriguez Gacha organization,” State Department deputy spokesman Richard Boucher said Monday. “The incident is still under investigation by the governments of Antigua and Colombia.”

The government of Antigua and Barbuda denied Monday that it had “ordered or paid for such arms.” But its Foreign Affairs Ministry has hired a Washington lawyer, E. Lawrence Barcella Jr., to investigate the incident in Israel, where he arrived Monday.

SHIPMENT LINKED TO RETIRED COLONEL

Israel Television reported that the shipment was arranged by retired Israeli Lt. Col. Yair Klein. It said he was hired by Eduardo Herrera, a former Panamanian ambassador to Israel who wanted to overthrow Noriega.

The Israeli state-run station said the weapons were “bought for the survivalist training school that Israelis were going to set up near the capital of Antigua to train, among others, the Panamanians.”

Last year, Klein acknowledged training armed groups in a remote area of northern Colombia. But he denied any involvement with drug traffickers, saying he believed he was helping ranchers defend themselves from guerrillas.

Klein has also been interviewed by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations as part of a study of how Central American drug dealers are able to obtain sophisticated weaponry.

But Ruth Yaron, a spokeswoman for the Israeli Embassy here, said Israel has no evidence Klein helped arrange the shipment to Antigua.

She said Israel supplied Antigua with “a small quantity” of weaponry after receiving an end-user certificate, which specified the weapons were not to be transferred to a third party. “We have no knowledge how this supply found its way beyond the borders of Antigua,” she said.

At the State Department, deputy spokesman Boucher said the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv has “raised our concern about these arms with the government of Israel. We understand the Israeli government is cooperating in the investigation.”