Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.news From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: U.N. watches as Iraq begins destroying chemical weapons Date: Tue, 10 Nov 92 15:13:22 EST Message-ID: \SE A;WORLD \SS (WS) \HD U.N. watches as Iraq begins destroying chemical weapons \BY Randall Palmer \CR REUTERS NEWS AGENCY \DT MANAMA, Bahrain MANAMA, Bahrain - Iraq, under U.N. supervision, has begun to destroy its vast holdings of mustard gas, by far the largest component of its chemical weapon stocks, a U.N. inspector said yesterday. The inspector, Ron Manley of Britain, said that under the current program all of Iraq's chemical weapons known to the United Nations would be destroyed within a year. He spoke with reporters on his return from a five-day visit to Iraq as head of a team of poison gas experts. During the visit, the five experts commissioned an incinerator designed to safely burn mustard gas. It already has burned 8 tons of the stuff and, after some minor modifications, should begin full destruction within a week. "By autumn of next year we should have destroyed all of the chemical weapons Iraq is known to have," Mr. Manley said. [In Baghdad, U.N. weapons inspectors started scouring Iraqi rivers, lakes and canals, collecting samples to determine if Iraq has any secret nuclear facilities, the Associated Press reported. ["The inspection has not generated anything fantastic," said team leader Dimitri Perricos of Greece. "But we are trying." [The 32-member team visited the wreckage of a former Iraqi nuclear facility, bombed by allied forces during the Persian Gulf war, to determine whether it was being reactivated.] Mustard gas was the deadly weapon introduced in World War I, killing an estimated 1 million people and prompting the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which banned use of the weapon. It destroys exposed skin and eats into lungs if inhaled. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein used mustard gas against the Kurdish population in northern Iraq in 1988. Mr. Manley estimated that Iraq has 500 tons of the gas, which the incinerator should be able to burn at the rate of about 3 1/2 tons a day. It will then burn the nerve agent tabun, a gas developed by the Germans in World War II, of which the Iraqis have about 75 tons. Nerve agents attack the central nervous system and kill by paralyzing the ability to breathe. About 200 to 400 Iraqis and 34 U.N. staff members are supervising the destruction, he said. The main chemical weapons site at Muthana contains some 30,000 rockets, bombs and shells, often leaking their poisons into the air because they were damaged in allied air attacks or because they have been stored in the sun for so long. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM