BELGRADE, May 12 (Xinhua)-- Bosnia's defense minister denied on Thursday any clandestine shipment of arms to Iraq, saying its weapons delivery to the country was legal and that they had gone into the possession of the new Iraqi government, according to newsreports from Bosnia-Herzegovina's capital Sarajevo.

    The remarks came as a response to Amnesty International's claimthat Bosnia had sold some 200,000 small arms to Iraq in a secret and non-transparent fashion, and that part of the shipment had not ended up with Iraqi security forces as intended.

    In an official statement, Bosnia-Herzegovina's Defense Minister Nikola Radovanovic termed the claims as unfounded, insisting that all of the 200,000 guns had ended up with the new Iraqi government and their security forces.

    In its report, the London-based group Amnesty, which investigated the sale of the arms, said that the U.S. government had arranged for the delivery of at least 200,000 Kalashnikov machine guns from Bosnia to Iraq from 2004 to 2005, using a web of private companies, at least one of which was an arms smuggler blacklisted by Washington and the UN.

    Radovanovic confirmed that the batch of weapons was shipped to Iraq via companies based in the United States, but stressed that everything was done in accordance with the law and relevant regulations. Enditem