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Biological and chemical threats
uncertain
By Charles Recknagel
PRAGUE - Many arms experts believe Iraq's
biological and chemical weapons programs constitute
Baghdad's greatest threat to the security of its
enemies. But just how immediate and broad a threat the
programs represent is the subject of intense
international discussion.
Washington and London
contend the threat is urgent and extends worldwide due
to the possibility that Baghdad could provide chemical
or biological agents to global terrorist groups like
al-Qaeda. Many other countries see the threat as far
less urgent, arguing that the Iraqi government has
sought to develop the weapons for its own military use
against domestic rebellions or neighboring states.
Our correspondent asked Jean Pascal Zanders, an
arms control expert at the Stockholm International Peace
Research Institute in Sweden to describe Iraq's
biological and chemical weapons programs and the dangers
they pose.
Zanders said Iraq's biological
weapons effort is the most worrisome of all Baghdad's
weapons of mass destruction programs because it is the
one arms inspectors know the least about. He said that
Iraq in the past has gone to extraordinary lengths to
hide its biological weapons activities from United
Nations inspectors. And it has had considerable success
doing so because many of the activities take place in
small production facilities that are hard to spot.
In one measure of Iraq's success, chief UN
weapons inspector Hans Blix reported to the Security
Council this week that Baghdad appears to have kept
hidden sufficient growth medium to produce 5,000 liters
of concentrated anthrax.
At the same time, arms
inspectors say Iraq has yet to prove it destroyed, as
Baghdad has claimed, some 8,500 liters of anthrax it
admits to having made prior to the 1991 Gulf War. Iraq
has also never proved its claim to have destroyed some
20,000 liters of another lethal biological agent,
botulinum toxin, and 10 liters of ricin. Many arms
experts believe the amounts Baghdad admits it once made
are, in fact, only part of much larger stocks that it
produced.
But Zanders said that although Baghdad
has large amounts of growth media for biological agents,
and likely large stocks of the agents themselves, these
elements alone are not enough to produce usable military
weapons. He said that delivery systems must also be
perfected. "[The Iraqis] had been looking at a variety
of delivery systems, including aerial spray tanks, even
missile warheads. To what extent they were successful
with these weapons, I have no idea. But it would have
been extremely difficult for them during the 1990s to
have conducted field tests to establish these parameters
[for reliably disseminating the agent against a
target]," Zanders said. "The quality of the
dissemination will determine the number of casualties
you are going to have, because if you don't get the
right particle size, people will not inhale it, [they]
will not get it into the lungs, so they are not going to
develop the anthrax [infection]. So, it might be used as
a terrorizing weapon. But whether it would be extremely
effective from any military point of view, some
questions can be raised about that."
Zanders
also said that any use of biological agents as a
military weapon would have to be tested in the field,
making them visible to foreign intelligence agencies or
to inspectors. Field tests would also have to involve
training of troops to familiarize them with the use of
the agents and how to protect themselves against them.
"These dissemination technologies must be tested, and
especially open-air tests are things that would be
detected by the various capabilities of the intelligence
services of the big powers. [And] you still need to
train the soldiers in the use of such agents to optimize
their military utility," Zanders said.
Iraq has
no known experience using biological agents in the
field, but it does have such experience with chemical
weapons. Baghdad made liberal use of mustard gas against
Iranian troops during the 1980-1988 Iraq-Iran war and
allegedly gassed Iraqi Kurdish civilians in northern
Iraq in 1988. Some investigators of the gassing of the
Iraqi Kurds believe Baghdad may also have used
biological and radiological agents at the same time.
Blix said during this week's address to the UN
Security Council that Iraq has yet to account for some
6,500 aircraft bombs believed to contain mustard gas
that it did not use during the Iraq-Iran war. Mustard
gas stores well over time without losing its efficacy.
Blix also said that Iraq may have made more
progress than previously suspected in developing
stabilizing agents to increase the shelf life of other
lethal chemicals, such as the nerve agent VX. In the
past, perfecting stabilizing agents was a major problem
for Iraq's chemical and biological weapons development
efforts, raising doubts as to how effective the large
stocks it produced before the Gulf War remain today.
Zanders described Iraq's past problems with
stabilizers this way, citing its experiences with
another nerve agent, sarin, "If we go back to the late
1990s, sarin was one of the agents that was notoriously
unstable in the way Iraq produced it. It also had quite
a few impurities. Purity might have ranged anywhere
between 60 and 80 percent or so, which is low in
comparison to what the US and the Soviets achieved [in
developing sarin as a battlefield nerve agent]. One of
the problems of the impurities is that it degrades the
agent very quickly, so I would imagine that much of that
would have deteriorated."
Zanders said
inspectors are now trying to determine if Iraq used its
substantial stocks of precursor chemicals to restart
production of chemical and biological weapons during the
four years inspectors were banned form the country.
He personally suspects that the Iraqis may not
have engaged in large-scale production but concentrated
on laboratory work to try to solve problems with
stabilizers instead. "Production leaves a relatively
large footprint if one is thinking of militarily
significant quantities. What I think they might have
been doing on their various chemical and biological
agents is laboratory research into finding ways of
improving production methods and stabilizing the agents.
I wouldn't be surprised if such would be the finding of
the UNMOVIC inspectors."
The uncertainties
regarding the degree of Iraq's success in weaponizing
biological and chemical agents - other than mustard gas
- for battlefield use give support to arguments that
Iraq can be disarmed safely through a lengthy
inspection-and-monitoring process.
Supporters of
an extended inspection process argue that Saddam's
regime pursues weapons of mass destruction for its own
security ends but, because of problems delivering them,
probably has no immediate way to use them against a
neighboring state.
Some arms experts, like
Zanders, also doubt that Hussein would trust second
parties, like al-Qaeda, with weapons that could equally
be turned against him or, if used against the United
States, traced to him. "If Iraq is pursuing such
weapons, it is primarily because the leadership
perceives that it needs these weapons for its survival.
Giving it to terrorists, which one cannot control after
the agent has been delivered, is probably not something
that the Iraqi leadership would consider. Secondly, the
possibility of identifying Iraq as the source of the
anthrax would create just the same kind of retaliation
from the United States and other countries as its actual
use on the battlefields might do," Zanders said.
But such arguments get no hearing from US
officials, who maintain Iraq might indeed provide
chemical and biological agents to terrorist groups
outside his control. Fears of the use of such agents for
terrorist attacks are heightened by memories of a
Japanese cult's sarin attack on the Tokyo metro system.
That attack killed 12 people and injured about 5,500.
The amount of time given to the UN arms
inspectors in Iraq may depend ultimately upon
Washington's success in convincing other states that
there is an Iraq-terrorist connection or, failing that,
upon Washington's readiness to strike Iraq without broad
international support.
US President George W
Bush this week again accused Iraq of having links to
terrorists and said that he is prepared to use the "full
force" of the US military against the regime of Saddam
Hussein if necessary.
Speaking in the annual
State of the Union address to the US Congress, Bush said
evidence from intelligence and other sources shows that
the Iraqi regime supports terrorists, including members
of the al-Qaeda network. He gave no further details, but
said that Secretary of State Colin Powell will go to the
Security Council on February 5 to present new evidence
against Iraq to the international community.
Copyright (c) 2002, RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted
with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington DC
20036
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