Contemporary efforts by Pik Botha, Roelf Meyer et al to prevent a war in Iraq are germane to the looming confrontation that is ticking ever closer as the weather improves.

It is probably true to say that South Afric has at least a moral obligation to try and prevent what's coming. This country has, after all, supplied major quantities of ordinance to Iraq, albeit that at that time no one could foresee how the unanimously "elected" Iraqi junta and its military industrial complex would develop and expand into "lebensraum" mode.

The focus then was on the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. Many of those weapons and much of the ammunition no doubt still exists.

As a casual visit to one's local library easily shows, in 1983/84 Cardoen Industries of Chile sold to Iraq 100 G5 155mm artillery howitzers, which it built under licence from Armscor of South Africa. In a massive offensive between April and June 1988 on a strategic Iranian peninsula, the Iraqis used their G5s to fire high explosive TNT, cyanide and nerve gas shells at Iranian targets; meanwhile, out in the water, Iraq laid anti-shipping acoustic/magnetic mines supplied by the supposedly anti-apartheid Gaddafi of Libya, who purchased them from none other than Armscor.

Between 1984 and 1986, Armscor supplied Iraq with 155mm ammunition for the G5s. The Rheinmetall shell-filling and priming plant used for this was originally exported to a Paraguayan customer, but was diverted on the high seas ans set up in South Africa. Consignments were shipped in oil tankers that were half-filled with water. The remaining tanks were loaded with the ammunition.

The tankers went to Aqaba, Jordan, for unloading and overland shipment to Iraq. The tankers then proceeded to the Gulf and loaded Iraqi oil in payment for the ammo.

As a local bank once said : "Makes you think doesn't it?" Oddly, Armageddon may come with a Proudly South African logo emblazoned across it.

With acknowledgements to Mike Rochfort and Business Report.