State Papers – 1977: Soviets refuse to help trace IRA rocket launchers
The rocket launchers were seized in the North in late 1972, a dark year which earlier included Bloody Sunday in Derry and the burning of the British embassy in Dublin.
The embassy sent a briefing on the rocket seizures to the Department of External Affairs (Foreign Affairs).
Britain’s head of Soviet affairs in its Foreign Office had asked to meet the Counsellor from the Soviet embassy in London in December.
Markings on a rocket launcher seized the month before in the North appeared to be in Russian or in Cyrillic characters.
Britain was “naturally concerned about the supply of arms” in the North. Other countries had co-operated in tracing arms supplies, the Foreign Office official suggested.
“In the same spirit, the British authorities would be grateful if the Soviet authorities could be asked to confirm whether the rocket and launcher, of which photographs were shown to... [the Counsellor], were manufactured in the Soviet Union.
“If so, the British authorities would be interested in any suggestion that the Soviet authorities might be able to offer as to how these pieces of military equipment found their way into the hands of the IRA.”
Markings on the rockets were deliberately defaced. The British wanted to know where the rocket was made, sold and to whom. But the Soviet consular was reluctant to help.
The Soviet Union was in “no way a supplier of arms to terrorists in Northern Ireland” and it rejected such acts but its policy was to steer clear of other countries’ internal affairs. It was up to the British to follow such leads rather than “throw responsibility on the Soviet Union”, the embassy said its Foreign Office was told by the Soviet Counsellor.
The Soviets noted the rocket’s details but declined to take away photographs.
Following a second rocket launcher find in the North in December, the Soviet and British officials met again, Ireland was told.
The Soviet Embassy declined to say if answers about the rockets were forthcoming.
The British briefing to Iveagh House, copied to the Department of Justice and the Taoiseach, asked for Ireland to cooperate in tracing any further rocket launcher finds.
“….we very much hope that the Irish authorities will be ready to compare notes with us, with a possible view to further diplomatic tension, if and when examples of this type of weaponry should be captured south of the border,” the embassy told the Department of External Affairs.
