In 60 days the United Nations inspectors charged with hunting down Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons have carried out 300 inspections at more than 230 different sites, including universities, military bases, presidential sites and private homes.
The head of the inspection body, Unmovic, Hans Blix, began his report to the UN Security Council by praising the Iraqis for offering good access to its facilities. However, he then went on to raise specific concerns about Iraq’s possible weapons of mass destruction programmes:
Chemical bombs
”Thirteen thousand chemical bombs were dropped by the Iraqi air force between 1983 and 1988, while Iraq has declared that 19 500 bombs were consumed during this period. There is a discrepancy of 6 500 bombs. The amount of chemical agent in these bombs would be in the order of about 1 000 tonnes. We must assume these quantities are now unaccounted for.”
The assessment: According to Professor Alastair Hay of Leeds University, one of Britain’s leading specialists in chemical warfare issues, 6 500 bombs would be militarily significant and could do a lot of damage. However, he pointed out that ”you need aircraft to drop them and if you don’t have control of the skies, as the Iraqis don’t, it’s fairly useless”.
Professor Julian Robinson of the science policy research unit at Sussex University, said: ”The figure of 6 500 bombs and 1 000 tonnes is new, although the story of the document was known.”
How lethal would that be? ”It’s hard to say. You would expect about a tonne per square kilometre, so you could contaminate a large area. Against civilians it would be significant, though not against American troops who have chemical protection suits.”
Chemical warheads
”The discovery of a number of 122mm chemical rocket warheads in a bunker at a storage depot 170km south-west of Baghdad was much publicised. This was a relatively new bunker and the rockets must have been moved there in the past few years. Iraq states that they were overlooked from 1991 from a batch of some 2 000 that were stored there during the Gulf War. This could be the case. They could also be the tip of a submerged iceberg.”
The assessment: The large number of missing warheads was significant but the key questions were whether they had been filled with chemical liquid. The United States used stabilisers in their chemical munitions to prevent them degrading over time. It was not clear whether the Iraqis did, Hay said.
”The fact that the bunker was relatively new is significant,” said Robinson. ”But the few rockets discovered would not do much damage. They normally go in an old-fashioned 40-rocket launcher, so the number found would not even provide one full salvo.”
Anthrax
”Iraq has declared that it produced about 8 500 litres of this biological warfare agent, which it states it unilaterally destroyed in 1991. Iraq has provided little evidence for this production and no convincing evidence for its destruction. There are strong indications that Iraq produced more anthrax than it declared and that at least some of this was retained after the declared destruction date. It might still exist. Either it should be found and be destroyed under Unmovic supervision or else convincing evidence should be produced to show that it was, indeed, destroyed in 1991.”
The assessment: Anthrax has been one of the most contentious issues since the work of the weapons inspectors began in 1991. Toby Dodge, an Iraqi specialist at Warwick University, said that Iraq claimed in 1991 it had destroyed the anthrax unilaterally but four years later an Iraqi defector exposed that as a lie.
Scott Ritter, the former UN weapons inspector who is now one of the leading opponents of war, insisted that any anthrax left in Iraq would have degraded by now.
But Sir Tim Garden, a visiting professor at the British Centre for Defence Studies, is less sanguine. ”I am dubious about the claim about it going off.
Gruinard island [in the north of Scotland] was used as a test site for anthrax during the World War II and was not declared safe until 40 years later.”
Garden said that biological weapons were one of the most difficult areas. ”Biological is always hard as yoghurt factories can be turned into a manufacturer of biological weapons if you have the seed.”
Scuds missiles
”There remain significant questions as to whether Iraq retained Scud-type missiles after the Gulf War. Iraq declared the consumption of a number of Scud missiles as targets in the development of an anti-ballistic missile defence system during the 1980s. Yet no technical information has been produced about that programme.”
The assessment: The British government estimate is that Iraq retains about 20 of the type of Scuds fired against Israel in the Gulf War, while the CIA estimate is fewer.
Ritter dismissed Blix’s claim as absurd. ”Two were unaccounted for [after the Gulf War] and there was concern there might be seven or eight indigenous ones that we could not account for but were never sure these were operational.”
Ritter said he had given an assessment to Israel in 1994 on behalf of the weapons inspectors that Iraq did not have Scuds.
Garden agreed that Scuds are not a major problem: ”I do not think they have much of a long-range capability.”
Nuclear capability
”The first goal of our inspection activities was reconnaissance. We have inspected all of those buildings and facilities that were identified, through satellite imagery, as having been modified or constructed over the past four years. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors have been able to gain ready access and to clarify the nature of the activities currently being conducted in these facilities.”
The assessment: Satellite pictures provided by the US have raised alarm about the rebuilding of past nuclear installations. Despite the American suspicions raised by the satellite pictures, nothing untoward has been found by the nuclear inspectors.
But the key IAEA claim that it eliminated and ”neutralised” the Iraqi nuclear programme is viewed as questionable by some experts. ”Research and some testing is virtually impossible to detect,” said Gary Milholin, director of the Washington-based Wisconsin nuclear project. ”Saddam is trying to hide the programme.” — Â