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The Independent. 25th June 1998.
Baghdad scorns 'proof' of nerve gas
By Patrick Cockburn
Iraq is categorically denying that it ever produced VX gas
capable of being used in a missile warhead, while the
United States says that its laboratory tests show traces of
VX poison gas present at a site where Iraq destroyed
missiles.
The revelations about the VX are evidently the first shots
in a propaganda battle waged by the US to persuade the
United Nations Security Council to continue with sanctions
on Baghdad when they come up for review in October.
"If this finding is borne out, it will mean the UN Special
Commission [on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction] has
found evidence that the Iraqis were not telling the truth," a
Pentagon spokesman said.
Iraq admits experimenting with VX before the Gulf war, but
says the tests failed and it never put the gas in a weapon.
Baghdad says that if sanctions are not lifted it will pursue
"an alternative strategy".
"This is not a new discovery," Colonel Terry Taylor, a
former UN weapons inspector now at the International
Institute of Strategic Studies in London, was quoted as
saying yesterday. "This is old news, but it is a way of
bringing to the fore realities that have been glossed over."
At the weekend, a report from a US army laboratory on
missile fragments was leaked to the American press by an
Iraqi opposition group called the Iraqi National Congress. It
said pieces of missile from a site at Taji, just north of
Baghdad, analysed at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in
Maryland, had produced significant amounts of VX
disulphide and stabiliser to allow the VX to be placed in a
missile.
But the report is peculiar, as the INC, once a powerful
umbrella group for the Iraqi opposition, no longer really
exists. Jalal al-Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan, which is nominally one of the few remaining
members of the INC, told The Independent that the group is
moribund.
The leaking of the story about VX is likely to anger
members of the Security Council opposed to sanctions. The
council met yesterday to discuss the latest visit of Richard
Butler, head of the UN special team monitoring the
elimination of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
In the past, France, Russia and China have complained of
leaks of information about which they have not been
informed. Iraq is demanding that the tests conducted in the
US be repeated in laboratories in neutral countries.
The US may wish to counterbalance recent remarks made
by Mr Butler during a visit to Baghdad that progress was
being made in certifying that Iraq has eliminated its
strategic weapons.
Washington wants to return to a position where the burden
of proof was on Iraq to prove it had done away with its
weapons, rather than on the UN inspection team to produce
evidence that Iraq still possessed such weaponry.
Washington is concerned that during the confrontation with
Iraq in February, international support for sanctions was
undermined by the realisation that the main victims of
sanctions are ordinary Iraqis. Mortality among children
under the age of one has tripled since 1989, according to
the World Health Organisation.
But Iraq does not have many options. If it expels UN
weapons inspectors it may simply prolong sanctions. It
needs to show France, Russia and China, its potential
supporters in the Security Council, that it is doing its best
to co-operate with the UN.
Washington showed in February that it did not want to
restart the Gulf war by bombing Iraq. It discovered that the
failure to produce an Israeli-Palestinian agreement was
eroding its influence among Arab states. US officials have
since said privately that they will do everything to maintain
sanctions, though they will be more flexible in allowing Iraq
to spend money for humanitarian and development needs.
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