#3 - RW 269
COMMENTARY:
THREE SECRET SERVICES PULL OFF MAJOR COUP

MOSCOW, August 13 (RIA Novosti political analyst Vladimir Simonov) - A mere three years ago this could not have been possible. Three former enemies - the Russian, American and British secret services - carried out a brilliant joint operation that prevented the sale of a ground-to-air portable missile to Islamic terrorists in the US.

On Tuesday, FBI and FSB agents arrested in Newark, New Jersey, a person who had delivered a portable Igla anti-aircraft system to America to sell it to al-Qaeda. Fortunately, a field officer acted as the terrorist buyer.

The details of this complex operation are not being divulged. However, it clearly marks a breakthrough in anti-terrorist co-operation between the Russian, US and British security services. Sergei Ignatchenko, head of public relations for Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) has announced, "it (the operation) is the first since the end of the Cold War, when our secret services opposed each other."

Now the very level of the threat dictates that the former foes must establish an unprecedented degree of co-ordination.

At the heart of this story is an Indian-born British subject named Lokhani. Middle-aged and unremarkable, he led an equally ordinary life as a seemingly law-abiding British citizen. At any rate, he did not belong among international arms dealers long on the secret services' computer files. Lokhani's only passion was to make money on hot-selling items.

Everything would have remained fine if, in last winter, the thought had not occurred to Lokhani that there was nothing more profitable than the Russian portable Igla missile system. Naturally, it if were to be sold to al-Qaeda and not just anyone.

The Igla, as the British subject read in popular military magazines, is capable of hitting any target at a height of up to three kilometres, including a jumbo jet, especially when it is coming in to land or taking off. Al-Qaeda militants have already professed their love for this suitcase-sized weapon a child could understand - a year ago they tried to bring down a commercial liner owned by Israeli El Al airlines in Kenya.

The Igla is not, of course, the only anti-aircraft system on the world market. The Islamic paramilitary underground literally bursts with more or less similar American-made Stinger rockets. The US happily supplied them to the Afghan mujaheddin when they fought the Soviet army, but now seems to be bitterly regretting it. The mujaheddin have degenerated into international terrorists, and Stingers are threatening to boomerang against their homeland.

However that may be, Lokhani settled for the Igla as the instrument of his future enrichment and got down to business with the zeal appropriate for a multi-million snatch. Five months ago he went to St. Petersburg and then Moscow to look for a criminal group capable of obtaining a real, combat-ready anti-aircraft missile system.

The buyer set the condition that he only needed one for starters, so to speak. He continued that it could be followed perhaps by more - something like fifty or so. The business visibly assumed the scale of preparations for a new world war. True, with one small reservation: Lokhani did not know that the "representative of the terrorists" carried an FBI card in his pocket.

It appears the nimble British subject caught the secret services' collective eye in St. Petersburg, especially the Russian FSB. The rest was a virtuoso operation on the part of the three secret services involving the setting up of channels to the US, methods of payment for this service, and, of course, the buyers themselves - a clandestine cell of al-Qaeda militants with American passports.

Last Sunday, Lokhani boarded a British Airways flight from London to New York to enjoy what he thought was the biggest deal of his life. The lethal commodity, packed in an unspectacular case labelled "medical equipment", had been shipped to the American port of Baltimore a week earlier. The Igla naturally carried no charge. On board ship it was secretly escorted by a Russian agent. It must be stressed that throughout all the months of the operation there was not even a second when the missile could have fallen into terrorists' hands.

On Tuesday, in Newark, all the elements of the historic special operation fell into place. Lokhani received his money. The American extremists from al-Qaeda had their terrible toy. And all the criminal leading parts of the epic which could have turned into a repeat of the September 11 tragedy had a new pair of handcuffs each.

The sole remaining question is: what specific sensitive point in America did the terrorists want to hit with the Igla after paying what some sources estimate as 85,000 dollars?

Some conjectures, however, do exist. The FBI agent who acted as the buyer made clandestine recordings of all Lokhani's conversations. There is a curious fragment in these recordings where the British subject hints: the missile should be used "against a big passenger liner".

FBI representatives deny that this was a reference to Air Force One.

But many serious western anti-terrorist experts are not inclined to dismiss this possibility. Chris Yates, for example, an analyst from Jane's Aviation thinks that the missile can destroy everything flying at an altitude of up to 3 kilometres. The terrorists would have had the potential to attack Air Force One or any other liner with US or British citizens. That is an alarming development, said this British expert.

Despite the happy ending, the missile saga leaves a bitter aftertaste. Of course, the purchase of the Igla and its transportation across the ocean were what the secret services call a "controlled operation." Nevertheless, one cannot help feeling horrified about how vulnerable even the most developed countries are to terrorist attacks. The same feeling arises when one considers the ease with which terrorists can gain access to any terrible instrument of global evil, be it a portable anti-aircraft system, a "dirty bomb", or a nuclear power plant.

However, there is a second and more gratifying conclusion. Leaders of the world's eight most industrialised countries - Vladimir Putin among them - were thousands of times right when at a recent summit in Evian they pledged to co-ordinate the efforts of their intelligence services to counteract terrorism and prevent weapons of mass destruction, including missiles, falling into extremists' hands.

Moscow, Washington and London have just given an example of how this should be done in practice.

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