Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, August 26, 1995 TAG: 9508280069
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The effort, accelerating an existing nuclear weapons program, was aimed at producing a weapon for use by April 1991. The project was a response to the massive buildup in the Gulf region by U.S.-led coalition forces, which took Baghdad by surprise, according to Pentagon sources.
To make the weapon, Iraqi scientists planned to take fuel illegally from Iraq's nuclear reactors, which then were monitored by international inspectors.
The secret project is the most serious of a range of new revelations about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction that have come to light since the Aug. 8 defection of a key aide to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. For more than four years, Iraq has hidden all information about the project, turning over data to the United Nations only on its original program.
In Vienna, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday that Iraq has now turned over a number of high-quality steel parts that can be used to produce components for nuclear weapons. Among other things, the parts are common in centrifuge systems that enrich uranium, a pivotal step in making nuclear bombs.
Dr. Hans Blix, head of the international agency, informed the Security Council Friday that the revelations did not substantially alter previous conclusions that Iraq's nuclear program is ``fundamentally under control.'' But U.S. officials countered that the agency's credibility is questionable after it gave Iraq a clean bill of health a year ago.
Baghdad also had a program to produce and deploy 200 biological warheads - in bombs, artillery shells and missiles - that could have hit Saudi Arabia and been delivered as far from Iraqi soil as Israel. The bacteria anthrax was loaded in at least 50 R-400 bombs, and botulin, another bacteria toxin, had been loaded into a hundred bombs before the war, U.N. officials said.
``That was a super-secret program. That was the great equalizer for Iraq,'' U.N. special envoy Rolf Ekeus said in New York Friday after returning from Baghdad. Ekeus is in charge of finding and dismantling Iraq's weapons of mass destruction as a precondition to the lifting of the U.N. sanctions against Baghdad.
Iraqi scientists also grew a strain of germ warfare called aflatoxin, U.N. officials disclosed Friday. In the past, Iraq had admitted to developing only anthrax and botulin.
Baghdad backed down from using its weapons of mass destruction only after former Secretary of State James Baker warned about the potential American response to their use in a meeting with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz in Geneva, U.N. officials said.
The latest disclosures do not eliminate the threat from Iraq, senior U.S. officials asserted Friday. Since the Gulf War's end, Baghdad has rebuilt ``bigger and better'' facilities than those destroyed by the U.S. air bombardment.
And despite Iraq's disclosures about its massive biological weapons capabilities, U.S. sources asserted Friday that Baghdad is still hiding an active, loaded germ warhead, as well as other weapons of mass destruction.
Overall, Iraq could be back to its prewar military strength in one to two years, if all restraints, most notably U.N. monitors, are removed, according to an official U.S. estimate.
by CNB