By Peter Annear
PRAGUE — Despite President Vaclav Havel's pledge last year to curtail Czechoslovakia's arms industry — the country was the world's eighth largest weapons exporter in 1986 — the Civic Forum government has signed a deal, worth US$3 billion, to exchange 10 million tonnes of Iranian oil for Czechoslovak machinery and heavy arms.
Czechoslovakia has suffered from shrinking Soviet oil supplies and the conversion to hard currency trade with the USSR. Supplies of oil from Iraq dried up as a result of the Gulf crisis (in which Czechoslovakia enthusiastically backed the United States-led coalition).
The depressed Slovak republic is particularly dependent on the arms industry. Among large companies considered by Miroslav Zamecnik, an adviser to the finance minister, as technically insolvent are several arms producers, including ZTS Martin in Slovakia, which makes T-72 tanks under Soviet licence.
The US recently purchased Czechoslovak Tatra tank transporters. The Pentagon deployed many more of the reliable, air-cooled Tatras (which came from Germany, originally the property of the GDR) in the war against Iraq.
Prague also wants to cash in on the postwar Middle East economic bonanza. Czechoslovak foreign trade minister Jozef Baksay held discussions early in March with Kuwaiti ambassador Moussa Soleiman al-Moussa al-Saif regarding conditions of Czechoslovak participation in the reconstruction of the Kuwaiti economy.
The trade deal with Iran was announced on March 11, following a visit to Teheran by deputy premier and foreign minister Jiri Dienstbier. Annual trade with Iran has averaged US$100 million per annum in the last three years.
During the talks, Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati and the speaker of the Iranian parliament, Mahdi Karrubi, underlined Iran's rejection of foreign intervention in the region and the significance of the Palestinian issue in the solution of the Middle East situation. Dienstbier agreed to differ.