DATE: Saturday, November 15, 1997           TAG: 9711150343

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: FROM WIRE REPORTS  
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                        LENGTH:   86 lines

IRAQI STASH OF BIOLOGICAL, CHEMICAL ARMS RAISES STAKES

The showdown over Iraq's secret arsenal began when U.N. inspectors sought to uncover its biological-weapons program, including germ-warfare tests and suspected caches of anthrax, U.N. and U.S. officials said Friday.

The officials traced the confrontation, which has led to growing global tension, to an Oct. 27 letter from the chief of the U.N. weapons inspectors, Richard Butler, to Iraq's foreign minister, Tariq Aziz.

The letter said the United Nations intended to inspect secret sites controlled by President Saddam Hussein's elite personal security force, the Special Republican Guard, and suspected caches of data and materiel from Iraq's biological-warfare projects.

A senior U.N. official said the inspectors believed that those searches would help them fully describe the biological-weapons program for the first time, more than six years after the U.N. inspections began.

The Iraqi leadership never responded to the letter, sections of which were disclosed Friday by U.N. officials. But it appears to have struck a nerve.

Two days later, Iraq announced that it would shoot down American U-2 spy planes supporting the U.N. inspection team, and it vowed to expel the American members of the team from the country, a threat fulfilled on Friday. The United Nations, in turn, withdrew all its inspectors in protest.

The letter also sought information on missile warheads that the inspectors believe were filled with biological and chemical agents, and documentation on Iraq's possession of VX, a chemical nerve agent - all previously subjects of investigation.

But the letter signaled the Iraqis that the United Nations was specifically focusing on biological-weapons materials, components, tests and data, and on sites controlled by the Special Republican Guard, an elite 26,000-member force overseen by Saddam's son, Qusay.

The guard is charged with protecting the president's life, his palaces and his secrets; Qusay Saddam Hussein also controls Iraq's weapons factories. It has offices at Iraq's presidential palaces and intelligence headquarters, and controls other buildings and large tracts of land in and around Baghdad.

It has always placed these sites off-limits to the U.N. inspectors, citing reasons of national security. And for the past three years, U.N. officials said, the guard has been spiriting suspected weapons materiel and documents away from the inspectors.

So, last month, the investigators focused hard on investigating the guard itself, along with its campaign of concealment. They intended to conduct their searches between Nov. 7 and 11.

A senior Pentagon official who asked not to be named said Friday that there were 80 to 100 possible chemical weapons sites in Iraq and 100 or more potential biological warfare sites.

He said it was ``not logical to believe'' U.S. bomb strikes could destroy all those facilities, which are sprinkled throughout Iraq.

Except for a newly developed nuclear warhead that can penetrate dozens of feet underground, U.S. missiles probably cannot reach the most deeply buried Iraqi targets. U-2 surveillance planes can spot the movement of weapons above ground but may not reveal some important details, such as the type of weapons.

Asked how long it might take for Iraq to rebuild its stockpiles of horror weapons in the absence of inspectors, Secretary of Defense William Cohen said Friday, ``It would be difficult in a matter of days; but if days turn into weeks or weeks into months, then obviously that gives him a much more robust capability.''

Although U.N. investigators say they lack many solid facts about the Iraqi biological weapons program, they assert that Iraq has vastly understated the size of its anthrax stocks. The Israeli daily Haaretz reported Friday that the U.N. weapons inspectors were close to identifying the location of nearly 900 pounds of anthrax last month.

Anthrax is among the deadliest biological weapons known. According to a CIA report, Iraqi scientists in 1990 manufactured 2,224 gallons of anthrax, enough to kill one-third of the U.S. population.

The CIA also reported that the Iraqis had produced about 1,585 gallons of concentrated botulism toxin, a poison so powerful that a mere microgram smaller than a speck of dust can cause paralysis and death.

Congressional investigators learned last year that America's emergency response system has little clue of how to deal with a biological attack.

``We heard from fire chiefs, police chiefs and physicians who basically said that our nation was totally unprepared,'' said John Sopko, who was an aide to former Sen. Sam Nunn, who investigated the use of biological and chemical weapons by rogue states and terrorists.

All of this uncertainty increases the stakes in America's standoff with Saddam. MEMO: This story was compiled from reports by The New York Times,

Knight-Ridder News Service and The Associated Press.

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