ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, September 20, 1996 TAG: 9609200055
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
NOTE: Below
The government is notifying about 5,000 U.S. troops that they could have been exposed to nerve gas from an Iraqi chemical weapon depot in 1991. The total affected is nearly five times the number the government previously estimated and could climb even higher.
The government announced the expanded notification Wednesday, saying troops could have been exposed a second time a week after a chemical weapon bunker was destroyed.
More troops beyond the 5,000 could be notified in the next few weeks, said Deputy Secretary of Defense John White.
The Pentagon earlier this year disclosed that members of the Army's 37th Engineer Battalion that blew up ammunition - including chemical weapons - at Iraq's Kamisiyah weapon storage site March 4, 1991, may have been exposed to nerve gas. It said there were about 150 members of the 37th present at the demolition.
However, the latest announcement described a second low-level exposure to chemical weapons March 10, 1991. Members of the 37th destroyed an unknown number of chemical rockets found in stacks of crated munitions in a pit area a few miles away from Bunker 73, which was destroyed March 4. Both sites are in the Kamisiyah complex in southern Iraq.
The Pentagon has said any troops within a 25-kilometer radius - 16 miles - of the Kamisiyah complex could have been exposed. The Defense Department and CIA are working with computer models to estimate the dispersion of chemical agents in the area.
``As we learn more about Kamisiyah in these next few weeks, we expect to identify more troops who might have been exposed,'' the statement said.
Earlier this month, the Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses estimated 1,100 troops were exposed to the nerve gas. The panel was created by President Clinton last year to help get to the bottom of reports of mysterious, debilitating illnesses among many Gulf War veterans.
Some believe the illnesses may be linked to exposure to Iraqi chemical weapons, but the Pentagon says it has no conclusive evidence of a link.
The Pentagon acknowledged last month it has known since November 1991 that chemical weapons such as nerve gas were stored at the Kamisiyah ammunition depot. But it said it did not know then that U.S. troops were involved in the depot's destruction the previous March, shortly after the war's end.
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