US officials pushing Russia on Syrian arms sales

US officials are renewing criticism of Russia over the delivery of weapons to Syria, with US Secretary of State John Kerry openly chastising Russia Monday for the shipments and lawmakers calling on the Pentagon to halt business with Russian state-owned arms dealer Rosoboronexport.

“The bad actors, regrettably, have no shortage of their ability to get weapons from Iran, from Hezbollah, from Russia, unfortunately, and that’s happening,” Kerry told a news conference in Saudi Arabia after meeting with that country’s foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal.

The sale of Russian weapons to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime has been a source of bilateral tension between Moscow and Washington, with US officials accusing Russia of arming a regime the United States says is killing its own citizens in Syria’s raging civil war.

Russia, however, has insisted that the deliveries are legal under international law and that it is not supplying Syria with offensive weapons. Moscow has also questioned the composition and goals of the various armed groups fighting the Assad regime.
Kerry’s comments came on the heels of a letter from US Sens. John Cornyn and James Inhofe urging new US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel abide strictly by a statute prohibiting the Pentagon from doing business with Rosoboronexport, according to the Washington-based nonprofit Human Rights First.

The lawmakers wrote to Hagel last week to express their “opposition to any continuation” of the Pentagon’s “business relationship with Rosoboronexport,” saying that such dealings would constitute a “direct subversion of existing law by the Department of Defense,” Human Rights First said in a statement.

Neither lawmaker’s office provided a copy of the letter upon request Monday, though a spokesman for Cornyn said he was aware of the correspondence.

The US Army has ordered hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of transport helicopters from Rosoboronexport, but US lawmakers inserted a ban into the 2013 US military budget prohibiting the Pentagon from engaging in business with the arms suppliers.

The budget, however, allows the Pentagon chief to use a “national security waiver” in order to do business with the state-owned firm.