(Washington Post) - Rolf Ekeus During its war against Iran, Iraq found that chemical warfare agents, especially nerve agents such as sarin, soman, tabun, and later VX, deteriorated after just a couple of weeks' storage in drums or in filled chemical warfare munitions. Thus, the Iraqi policy after the Gulf War was to halt all production of warfare agents and to focus on design and engineering, with the purpose of activating production and shipping of warfare agents and munitions directly to the battlefield in the event of war. The combination of researchers, engineers, know-how, precursors, batch production techniques, and testing is what constituted Iraq's chemical threat - its chemical weapon. Iraq's biological weapons program, and specifically its now-unemployed specialists, constitute a potential threat of much the same magnitude. The writer was executive chairman of the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) on Iraq from 1991 to 1997.
2003-07-01 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive