Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 15, 1990 TAG: 9003152681
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: TUNIS, TUNISIA LENGTH: Long
Gadhafi again asserted that the heavily guarded plant was designed only to produce pharmaceuticals, but said Libya would be willing to pay millions of dollars to any company that builds it a chemical weapons facility.
The plant near Rabta, about 60 miles southwest of the Libyan capital, Tripoli, caught fire on Wednesday. There were conflicting reports about damage and how the fire started.
ABC News quoted unidentified Libyan security sources as claiming the plant was burned to the ground by U.S. and Israeli agents. The United States and Israel denied any involvement.
Today, the British Broadcasting Corp. quoted an unidentified spokesman for the official Libyan news agency JANA as saying there had been a fire in some machinery at the plant but that the building had not been damaged.
A JANA spokesman in Tripoli said he did not know the extent of the damage or whether there were casualties. There was no answer to repeated telephone calls to Libyan ministries in Tripoli.
Gadhafi said on Radio Tripoli that an investigation has been launched to determine if West German intelligence services are implicated in "an action committed in Libya." West Germany has acknowledged that West German companies helped build the plant. A government official in Bonn today denied any West German involvement in the plant fire.
Gadhafi was quoted as saying that if West Germany is implicated in the fire, "the economic presence of Germany will be eliminated from Libya, and that state which is involved in espionage and sabotage in the interests of imperialism and Zionism will lose out."
The broadcast was monitored by the BBC in London.
For more than 14 months, the United States has accused Libya of using the plant to make chemical weapons, including mustard and nerve gases. Last week, the White House said the plant was dangerous and should be shut down. The White House refused to rule out the possibility of military action to close it.
When Western reporters were taken to the chemical plant in January 1989, they found it guarded by soldiers, tanks and surface-to-air missiles. The journalists were not allowed to inspect the plant.
Gadhafi today denied that Libya was making chemical weapons, saying it would take another 20 years for his country to develop such armaments. But he said Libya would pay millions to anyone willing to build such a chemical weapons plant.
"I challenge any company or state to come to Libya to build a chemical factory, then I would personally sign the contract without hesitation, and I would pay a thousand million to anyone who could build a chemical factory for Libya, because the world has not yet forbidden it," he was quoted as saying.
He said Libya would not have hesitated in making "weapons of total destruction" if it had the ability.
Mahmoud Azzabi, press secretary at Libya's U.N. mission in New York, said there was speculation that saboteurs infiltrated Libya from neighboring Tunisia.
"The Libyans said it was a terrorist attack but it was impossible to say what group," a Tunisian Interior Ministry spokesman said on condition of anonymity. He refused to answer other questions.
West Germany's ambassador in Tripoli met with Libya's Foreign Office, a West German government official said in Bonn. The official, who demanded anonymity, said he did not know the reason for the meeting.
He also said protesters had gathered outside the West German Embassy in Tripoli today, "but the demonstration doesn't seem to be very big."
Libya's Radio Tripoli urged Arab support for Libya in the face of "an aggressive campaign of American imperialism."
"The American campaign against the pharmaceutical factory at Rabta is a conspiracy against this important strategic achievement, which should furnish medicine for the entire Arab nation and break the foreign monopoly in this area," said the broadcast, monitored in Tunis.
Reports of a fire first came from Washington Wednesday evening.
President Bush said the United States had heard rumors the plant was on fire but that he did not know what had happened.
White House press secretary Marlin Fitzwater said: "We deny we had any involvement" in the reported fire.
A spokesman at the Israeli military command in Jerusalem said: "I only heard about it from news reports. I do not know if the plant is really on fire and I have nothing to say about it."
Yitzhak Rabin, who resigned as Israel's defense minister on Tuesday, denied that Israel was involved in the fire, calling the speculation "nonsense."
Fitzwater said the United States was told of the fire by diplomatic sources, who also said Libya had sealed its borders.
"We just dare not speculate on the cause," Fitzwater said.
Fitzwater said last week that the plant "is dangerous and becoming more so" and called for "vigorous efforts to stop the operation" of the plant. He refused to rule out military action to close it.
The United States engaged in hostilities with Libya three times in the 1980s, twice shooting down Libyan fighter planes and bombing Tripoli in 1986 in retaliation for what former President Reagan said was terrorism against Americans in Europe.
Western journalists were invited to tour the Rabta plant in January 1989 but were not allowed to inspect it after they arrived.
Libya was accused of using chemical weapons in a war against Chad.
by CNB