14
University Daily Kansan / Friday, October 25, 1991
Accidents abound in Iraq
U.N. team surveys Iraq chemical weapons site
The Associated Press
UNITED NATIONS — Iraq's crash program to stockpile chemical weapons caused accidents at a rate up to 100 times above the standards accepted by Western military powers, U.N. experts said yesterday.
Iraqi officials told U.N. weapons inspectors that annually they had about 100 chemical weapons incidents, about 10 of which they considered major, said one official with the U.N. Special Commission that is dismantling Iraq's mass destruction weapons.
When the United States, Britain and other Western nations were actively building chemical weapons, they considered one or two minor accidents a year to be par for the course, he said.
The Iraqis did not define what they considered to be a major accident. But the inspector cited a case he witnessed earlier this year in which a nerve-gas
filled shell ruptured with an Iraqi official standing nearby.
The Iraqis keep medical teams at their chemical weapons munitions dumps. The official in that incident was a military officer where he recovered in a few days.
The inspectors said the U.N. team had to take at face value Baghdad claims that Iraq had never had a fatality in its nuclear program.
Other Special Commission officials were skeptical of the claim.
A team of about 50 U.N. Special Commission inspectors now is surveying the main Iraqi chemical weapons site at the Muthanna military base outside of Baghdad. The team's mission is expected to end in early November.
The inspectors are checking all of the many buildings on the site because Baghdad consistently has given inaccurate estimates of Iraq's weapons programs in official declarations to the United Nations.
In April, Iraq said it had about 12,000 chemical bombs, shells and missiles. But inspectors found about 46,000 loaded weapons, along with many more unfilled munitions.
Among the deadly chemicals used were mustard gas and the nerve gases Sarin and Tabun.
Iraq declared it had 52 Scud or modified Scud missiles, and 30 chemical weapon warheads for them. During the Persian Gulf war, Iraq fired about 70Scus at Israel and Saudi Arabia, but all apparently had conventional explosive warheads.
More Scuds eventually were found by U.N. weapons inspectors, and the United States thinks Iraq could have up to 200 more buried in outlying hiding places.
Iraq is a signatory to the 1925 Geneva Protocol that bans the use of chemical weapons in times of war but does not prohibit manufacturing or stockpiling such weapons.
U. N. inspectors found evidence of Iraqi use of chemical weapons against Iran during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War.
Western governments also accused Iraq of using chemical weapons against Kurds in northern Iraq.
Bush announces removal of 2,000 nuclear arms from allied nations
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — President Bush has declared that more than 2,000 U.S. nuclear weapons will be removed from all nations overseas and returned to the United States for storage or destruction.
The removal, which could take as long as two years, will be done carefully and slowly, without any notifi-
tion of the damage inside or outside the Pentagon say.
"Actually, is this something that has been done thousands of times in the past," said Robert S. Norris, an analyst with the Natural Resources Agency, who are nuclear issues. "The government just chooses not to talk about it."
betaken off U.S. ships.
In September, Bush announced an arms control package that included the elimination of all ground-launched, short-range nuclear weapons from posts around the world, amounting to about 1,700 warships. He also ordered that some 300 tactical nuclear weapons
Last week, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization announced it would slash by half its arsenal of nuclear bombs delivered by tactical aircraft, meaning that hundreds of such weapons could be returned to the United States. Pentagon officials also have confirmed reports that the United States intends to withdraw all nuclear bombs from South Korea.
While some of the weapons will be stored, most will be destroyed at the Pantex plant outside Amarillo, Texas, the only U.S. site capable of building or disassembling such arms.
One senior Pentagon official said that the removal would be a long process. For example, he said, the aircraft used to transport nuclear weapons fly only in nearly perfect weather conditions. Such delays are programmed into the schedule, he said.
For reasons of security, the overseas transport of nuclear weapons is handled by specially trained Air Force units, the Primary Nuclear Air lift Force, Norris said.
Norris said he expected the weapons would be retrieved from sites in allied nations such as Turkey, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Britain, Belgium and Germany.
The process is a delicate and difficult one, given the complexity of the weapons, the specialists required to operate, and the complexity of the nuclear material they handle.
In line with Bush's announcement, the Navy no longer will deploy ships with tactical nuclear weapons aboard.
Pentagon representative Pete Williams said it would take up to eight months for all Navy ships dispersed around the world to return to their home ports and unload their tactical nuclear weapons because none will be brought home specifically for that reason.
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