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

DATE: SATURDAY, April 7, 1990                   TAG: 9004070207
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A12   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

BURN MARKS ON LIBYAN PLANT PHONY, SATELLITE PHOTOS SHOW

U.S. reconnaissance satellite photos of a Libyan chemical weapons complex allegedly damaged by fire last month show that burn marks were painted onto the buildings, intelligence officials said Friday.

"It clearly was an attempt at deception," one senior U.S. intelligence official said of the paint job. "It's not particularly well done."

Another source called the discovery "excellent evidence" that the fire was a hoax perpetrated by the regime of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

U.S. intelligence officials appear confident, however, that the heavily guarded Rabta facility, 50 miles southwest of Tripoli, is not about to resume operations.

"They're not going to do anything while the rest of the world is looking," one official said. "It's going to remain static as long as the heat's on."

The finding that buildings at the Rabta complex were daubed with dark paint, evidently to make them seem scorched by fire, was made before the Bush administration cautiously suggested last week that the incident might have been staged by Gadhafi's agents to make the plant seem inoperable.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said March 31 that "important uncertainties remain regarding both the cause and the extent of the damage at Rabta." He said he could not rule out the possibility of a hoax.

The administration early last month confirmed news reports that the plant was making lethal nerve gas and mustard gas. There has been widespread speculation that the fire, which was reported a week later, was arranged by Gadhafi's agents to ward off a possible military strike against the facility. Libyan officials have denied that the plant was producing chemical weapons.

The official Libyan news agency, JANA, claimed that several people died in the March 14 blaze, and a sign-wielding crowd in Tripoli demonstrated in front of the West German Embassy after Gadhafi accused Bonn of complicity.

U.S. officials said the fire lasted five hours at a chemical factory and several nearby storage buildings within the Rabta complex. They initially concluded that enough damage had been caused to end production for a long period.

by CNB