ROANOKE TIMES 

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 28, 1990                   TAG: 9003280383
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

PENTAGON DEMANDING CHEMICAL

The U.S. government is considering forcing two defiant chemical companies to sell the Pentagon a key ingredient for producing nerve gas, Pentagon officials said Tuesday.

Occidental Chemical Corp. and Mobay Corp. say that company policies forbid sales that would contribute to the proliferation of chemical weapons. Both have refused to fill Department of Defense orders for thionyl chloride, a widely used industrial and agricultural chemical that is needed to make a lethal nerve agent.

Defense officials said the two companies are the only ones in the United States that commercially produce the chemical agent. The companies' unwillingness to sell has brought the production of a new generation of U.S. chemical weapons, which began in 1987, to a halt.

The Army needs 160,000 pounds of the ingredient by June to proceed on schedule, the Pentagon said. Government officials said they can compel the companies to sell the chemical under the Defense Production Act, a 1950 law designed to give the Pentagon first priority on war materiel.

The standoff between the chemical manufacturers and the government is certain to put the Bush administration on the defensive as it works to stem the increase in Third World chemical arms production and to negotiate a worldwide ban.

In December, President Bush proposed to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that the superpowers sign an accord at their summit in June that would call for the destruction of 80 percent of their chemical weapons. But the Bush administration has said it will continue production of chemical weapons until an accord sponsored by the United Nations banning them goes into effect.

Though the Department of Commerce has the authority to enforce the Defense Production Act, spokesman Robert Kaylor said the matter is under review.

Occidental Chemical is a subsidiary of Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum Corp.; Mobay is a subsidiary of the West German chemical giant Bayer AG.

Neither company cited potential liability as a factor in its decision. 


 by CNB