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The United Arab Emirates (UAE), a nation of just fewer than 2 million people who live on 30,000 square miles of the Arabian Peninsula, was under British rule as recently as 1971. But Britain's democratic ideals made no impact there; the UAE is not a democracy and has no political parties. Its citizens have very little say in the process of government. However, thanks to its rich supply of oil, the UAE does have a lot of money. It is also a frequent ally against Clinton's current nemesis, Saddam Hussein, so the president has felt free to sell or approve the sale of $1.2 billion in U.S. arms to the UAE since 1993. We're not just talking leftovers, either: Among the UAE's purchases are AGM-114A Rockwell Hellfire antitank missiles, Raytheon RIM-7M Seasparrow ship-to-air missiles, and McDonnell Douglas Aerospace RGM-84A/C Harpoon ship-to-ship missiles. But that's just the beginning.
In 1995 Clinton personally called UAE President Sheikh Zayad ibn Nahayan in order to shill for Lockheed Martin: Clinton urged Zayad ibn Nahayan to buy an astonishing 80 F-16 fighters. In May 1998 the UAE finally agreed, but the sale has not yet gone through. Perhaps resentful of having its arm twisted by a philanderer, the UAE keeps raising the ante on the deal. For example, they demanded, and received, approval to purchase Raytheon's sophisticated AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles for its F-16s. The Clinton administration approved this sale despite strong protest from Israel's then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. (The UAE is the first nation other than Israel and the NATO countries to get clearance to buy AMRAAMs. Predictably, Thailand and other nations are now also clamoring to purchase these "fire and forget" beauties.) As if that weren't enough, the UAE is pressuring the United States to release source codes for F-16 flight software, which the U.S. has never done. The UAE has threatened to back out of the deal and buy planes from the French, or other nations, if they do not get the codes. The U.S. is reluctant, to say the least, since these codes help electronic surveillance systems identify aircraft as friend or foe; If other countries could access the codes, they could fire on U.S. or allied aircraft and jam their radars with impunity.
Lockheed Martin, while ostensibly interested in American national security, wants to seal the deal, and, according to the Council for a Livable World, has lined up on the UAE's side. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R, Texas), who raked in $1,500 from Lockheed Martin in the last election cycle -- and whose home state harbors the company's headquarters -- drafted a letter to President Clinton in which she and other legislators urged approval of the sale, according to David Davis, a Hutchison defense/foreign-policy aide. The sale is pending at press time. --Mat Honan Flags courtesy of World Flag Database
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