14 April 1998
EXPERT PANEL SAYS IRAQI DATA ON BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS IS "INADEQUATE"
(Technical evaluation session does not clear up doubts) (900) By Judy Aita USIA United Nations Correspondent United Nations -- A group of international experts has concluded that the biological weapons information Iraq has supplied to the U.N. weapons inspectors is "incomplete and inadequate" and that it cannot say for certain that Iraq is not continuing the deception. The written report to the Security Council submitted by U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) Chairman Richard Butler April 8 said the special panel determined that the information supplied by Iraq "provides no confidence that resources such as weapons, bulk agents, bulk media and seed stocks (to produce biological weapons) have been eliminated." The special technical evaluation team on Iraq's biological weapons program met with Iraqi experts in Vienna from March 20 to 27. The team included 18 biological weapons experts from around the world. Last year another UNSCOM panel of experts also determined that the report Iraq submitted as the "full, final, and complete" disclosure of its biological weapons program was inadequate and technically flawed. Under those circumstances, UNSCOM was unable to notify the Security Council of Baghdad's compliance with the weapons requirements of the Gulf war cease-fire agreement. That full compliance is necessary before sanctions can be lifted. Butler and Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz agreed late last year to hold a "technical evaluation meeting" to deal specifically with the differences on the biological weapons program. However, after the week's review, the new panel of international experts also concluded that Iraq's full, final and complete disclosure was "incomplete and inadequate." Using information independently collected by UNSCOM as well as Iraq's explanations and clarifications, the panel said Iraq's report "does not provide the basis for the formulation of a material balance or a determination of the structure and organization of the (biological weapons) program." "The organizational aspects of the biological weapons program are not clear and there is little confidence that the full scope of the biological weapons program is revealed," the experts said. "Additional aspects, such as the existence of dormant or additional biological weapons programs, remain unresolved." The experts also felt that the Iraqi officials were "not prepared to tackle the issues in the technical detail" that the evaluation session demanded. "They did not grasp the opportunity offered," the panel of experts said. Nevertheless the experts said Iraq promised to improve its declaration. Iraq has admitted to trying to hide its biological weapons program from the U.N. until 1995. But Baghdad has blamed the late General Hussain Kamal for the activities and said that it was not a government planned and co-ordinated activity. The experts called that excuse "absurd." "Iraq, however, has presented falsified or altered papers, accounts and material to conceal its offensive biological weapons program. Since February 1996 Iraq has not provided further documentation or plausible explanations for many aspects of its biological weapons program," the report noted. "It is not certain whether deception with regard to some elements of the biological weapons program continues," it said. While Iraq claims that its biological weapons program was destroyed in 1991, Baghdad "retained the facilities, growth media, equipment and groupings of core technical personnel at Al Hakam, and continued to deny the biological weapons program's existence," the experts said. They said the fact that Iraq has yet to offer documentation of its formal renunciation of the biological weapons program also raises "serious doubts" that the program was truly obliterated in 1991. "A most disturbing unresolved issue concerns the Al-Hussain biological weapons warheads," the report said. Iraq's account of the destruction of the warheads cannot be reconciled with the physical evidence. Recent discoveries of warheads in a pit at Al-Nibai, an "aircraft drop-tank project," production figures for both chemical and biological bombs, and Iraq's acknowledgement that it has provided incorrect information in the past, the report said, "casts doubts on many aspects of the Al-Hussain biological weapons warhead program." The experts also said that: Iraq underreported the amount of supplies and material it imported; did not report substantial quantities of microbial growth media; misrepresented the abilities of the various scientists working on the program; understated bulk biological weapons agent production; and provided questionable descriptions of Iraq's military organization involved in the biological weapons program. Another weapons report, this one from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), cast Iraq's compliance on its nuclear weapons program in a more favorable light. In a separate report to the Security Council April 9, IAEA said that the initial inspection of the eight so-called presidential sites -- to which U.N. weapons inspectors had been previously barred -- March 26 to April 3 "revealed no immediate indications of the presence of prohibited materials or equipment or of the conduct of prohibited activities with respect to" nuclear weapons. IAEA's ongoing monitoring since October 1997 "have not revealed indications of the existence in Iraq of prohibited equipment or material or of the conduct of prohibited activities," the IAEA said. The agency inspects sites which it feels have the capabilities to work on some aspect of nuclear weapons programs. UNSCOM oversees the biological and chemical weapons areas as well as long-range ballistic missiles. (For more information on this subject, contact our special Iraq website at: http://www.usia.gov/iraq )
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