USA lifts sanctions from Russia’s Sukhoi, reasons remain unexplained

US President George W. Bush told his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin yesterday that the USA had lifted sanctions from Russian aircraft-making company Sukhoi. Bush added that sanctions against the state-run defense export monopoly Rosoboronexport would be removed in the near future as well.

George W. Bush released the statement yesterday at the meeting between the two presidents in Vietnam’s Hanoi within the framework of the APEC summit. Official spokespeople for Sukhoi have already expressed their satisfaction in connection with the USA’s decision to lift sanctions from the world-known Russian defense enterprise.

Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov told reporters that US authorities had conducted an additional inspection of the circumstances which made the US State Department introduce sanctions against Aviation Corporation Sukhoi and Arms Export Enterprise Rosoboronexport on August 4 this year.

It is worthy of note that the US administration has never explained which facts or which actions committed by the above-mentioned Russian enterprises laid the foundation for punitive measures. In its statement issued on August 4 the US State Department claimed that the sanctions had been introduced for the violation of the US law banning collaboration with Iran in the field of creating weapons of mass destruction. Russian officials representing the two defense enterprises said that those accusations were highly doubtful because none of them had ever delivered anything to Iran since the beginning of the 1990s. The previous business contracts which Sukhoi and Rosoboronexport were running with Iran many years ago touched upon the field of conventional weapons only, but not WMDs.

Most likely, the US sanctions had been introduced against the two Russian enterprises as a response to the extremely successful contract, which Russia signed with Venezuela. The contract, concluded in 2006, stipulated the delivery of 24 Su-30 pursuit planes. The deal virtually gave Venezuela an opportunity to retrieve the battling capacity of its Air Force when the stock of its US-made battle planes became worthless because of the USA’s refusal to ship spare parts to the country.

The US law about non-proliferation regarding Iran means that penalized companies are forbidden to receive orders from the government of the USA. More importantly, the law stipulates criminal persecution of directors of other companies which execute US state orders for their cooperation with punished organizations. As a result a company subjected to sanctions loses its links with all of its partners including US-based enterprises.

Sukhoi’s administration expressed its sincere satisfaction with the decision of the US administration to lift the sanctions. “We are very glad that justice has finally been obtained and the sanctions have been lifted from the company. The sanctions created many problems for the holding in terms of cooperation with US companies. We are also glad that the additional inspection conducted by the US authorities proved that Sukhoi had not run any illegal cooperation with Iran,” Deputy General Director of Sukhoi jetmaker, Vadim Razumovsky said.

Vremya Novostei

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov
Pravda.ru

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