Miliband lied on British arms use in Gaza

When Miliband said that allegations British arms were being used were not true he was lying

By politics.co.uk staff

British arms were used by Israel during recent operations in Gaza, the foreign secretary has admitted.

The revelation is acutely embarrassing for David Miliband, who assured the Commons this was not the case during the fighting at the turn of the year.

http://gazasolidarity.blogspot.com/2009/02/uk-supplies-israeli-war-machine.html

[update 22 April]
The government is looking at five cases of possibly illegal arms export but none of the cases:

• Israeli reconnaissance satellites, for which Britain supplies minor components, which could have been used to provide information to the Israeli army. Miliband said: "We assess that these might have been used to prepare the operation but would not have played a significant part in the operation itself."

• F16 aircraft were "widely used" to deliver precision-guided bombs, and incorporate British components. Britain has banned the export of F16 components directly to Israel since 2002. But British F16 components are exported to the US "where Israel was the ultimate end user".

• Apache attack helicopters, which incorporate British components, exported to the US for use on helicopters "ultimately destined for Israel".

• Saar-class corvette naval vessels, which incorporate a British 76mm gun, and took part in operations from waters off Gaza.

• Armoured personnel carriers, which included conversions of British-supplied Centurion tanks, and were used as mobile headquarters. The Centurions were sold to Israel in the late 1950s.

But none of the cases mention the exports of drone engines. Drones are absolutely critical to the Israeli death machine in Gaza.

The foreign secretary, David Miliband, has twice been challenged on the issue of the engine drones in the Commons since Amnesty International and the Guardian three weeks ago pointed to evidence suggesting engines made by an Israeli-owned factory in Staffordshire had been fitted to the Hermes 450 unmanned aerial vehicle. .

Miliband told MPs who have been calling for an arms embargo the allegations were false. The engine, he said, "was not being used by the IDF but had in fact been for export. I am happy to stick with that."

The Israeli company that imported the engines, Elbit Systems – the owners of the British manufacturers UAV Engines Ltd (UEL) – has denied they were fitted to military drones in Israel, saying they were incorporated into aircraft for export only to third countries.

But at the committee hearing Jane Carpenter, a senior official with the export control section of the business and enterprise department, said that had not been checked. Sitting with Ian Pearson, the responsible business and enterprise minister, Carpenter said: "We cannot categorically confirm that we have physically checked that the engines have been incorporated. We only licensed them to Israel for onward export."

She added that, had the engines stayed in Israel, "that would be a contravention of the licence condition, and that would be an offence".

Pearson explained what checks had been made to allow Miliband to deny the allegations. "My understanding is, we have spoken to this exporter and they have confirmed what we already know from our own database: that while they export UAV engines to Israel, the engines are a particular variant which is not used in Israel but is incorporated into UAVs for onward export. So they would not have been involved in the current conflict."

Pearson also said that the UK government had no clear idea whether the F16s had used the BAE Systems gunsight technology.

Israel is a major exporter of UAVs, and the Hermes 450 has been sold to the US, Singapore and Georgia.

Britain's sensitivity about its military relations with Israel are acute since the Hermes is also the basis for the drone being developed by Elbit and the French company Thales for the £900m Watchkeeper UAV programme for the British army. The UK version, fitted with UEL engines, is due in service next year.

The Hermes programme , like all the Israeli-developed drones, is classified as a state secret; the IDF has refused to confirm or deny reports, which first surfaced during the second Lebanon war in 2006, that they were armed with missiles.

The evidence accumulated by the Guardian and Amnesty from academic and specialist aerospace public sources, as well as from Elbit's website and filings to the US security and exchange commission, suggested that the IDF Hermes had used engines made in the UK. The IDF first acquired these in 1997, three years after UEL Engines was bought by Elbit's drone subsidiary, Silver Arrow.

The authoritative industry journal Jane's Defence Weekly reported at the time: "It is powered by a 52 hp UEL AR-80 1010 rotary engine with propeller." Despite repeated requests, government departments have been unable to say whether they know what engines are used on the IDF's drones. From the Guardian