The United States has agreed to sell up to $2.3 billion worth of weapons
for the Iraq Army, and delivered at least $600 million of military equipment
to Baghdad in 2007. But most of the equipment has been restricted to
ammunition, helicopter upgrades and communications.
Talabani said one in five Iraqi police officers has been given a weapon.
He did not provide a delivery schedule for the Chinese weapons.
"The capacity of the factories here are not enough to provide us quickly
with all that we need, even for the army," Iraqi President Jalal Talabani
said. "One of our demands is to accelerate the delivery of the arms to the
Iraqi army."
Maj. Gen. Richard Sherlock, director for operational planning for the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Pentagon has reduced the wait for deliveries
to the Iraqi security force from one year to 150 days. Sherlock told an Oct.
4 briefing that the order-to-delivery period depended on the type of
equipment and availability.
"We're trying to compress that as much as we can," Sherlock said. "You
know, it would be great if we could get to 120 days or less. But again I
don't know that you can point to a specific goal and say it's successful.
Some things go faster; some things take longer. It depends on the pieces of
equipment."
Officials said the weapons shortage has been exacerbated by the Iraqi
Interior Ministry requirement for the Russian-origin AK-47 assault rifle for
police and security forces. In contrast, the Iraq Army has selected the
U.S.-origin M-16 and M-4 rifles.
"Where they're trying to go is they're trying to build enough capacity
to be able to sustain that and to develop contracts and develop sustainable
logistic systems, and that just takes time to do," Sherlock said. "So again,
this is all part of developing an independent security force that's capable
of sustaining operations."
The Bush administration has acknowledged that 190,000 weapons allocated
for Iraqi security forces have gone missing. Officials said this included
deliveries of more than 125,000 Austrian-made Glock semi-automatic pistols
to Iraqi police between 2003 and late 2006.
