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23 June 1998

PENTAGON CONFIRMS THAT IRAQ PRODUCED VX NERVE GAS

(UNSCOM's discovery contradicts Iraqi government claims) (570)
By Susan Ellis
USIA Staff Writer
Washington -- "Based on what we know so far, it does appear to be a
case where the Iraqis were not telling the truth about their
capability" to produce the deadly nerve gas VX, Defense Department
spokesman Ken Bacon said during a Pentagon briefing June 23.
In response to questions, Bacon confirmed a report carried in U.S.
newspapers that the United Nations weapons inspectors have uncovered
evidence that Iraq put VX into missile warheads before the 1991
Persian Gulf War. This contradicts claims by the Iraqi government that
it was unable to make a weapon using the volatile nerve agent.
Bacon said the Iraqi government "maintained for a long while that they
were unable to produce VX in large or stable quantities and therefore
had been unable to weaponize it. UNSCOM (the UN Special Commission)
has been working very hard to get to the ground truth about the state
of the Iraqi weapons program and this is one of the discoveries
they've made in the course of their work.
"The important thing here is that it shows the need for the UNSCOM
inspection regime. It illustrates why the United States has strongly
supported the UN inspections in Iraq, and it also illustrates why
UNSCOM, particularly recently, but since it was founded in 1991, has
been so aggressive in trying to get in and inspect and use scientific
methods to test what it finds."
Bacon confirmed that the US Army laboratory "was asked by UNSCOM to
examine some fragments" (recovered by UN inspectors from a destruction
pit in Iraq in March), and "it confirmed that the fragments contained
traces of VX."
Bacon added that "First of all it is important to lay out one fact:
although we know Iraq had chemical, and we believe biological weapons,
at the time of its invasion of Kuwait and in its subsequent fight
against the allies, it did not use these weapons. And we believe one
of the reasons it may not have used these weapons is because the U.S.,
President Bush, made it very clear that they would suffer devastating
and swift consequences if they used Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)
against allied troops."
He said VX is quite viscous, the consistency of oil "and it is highly
deadly (and) would be used to stop an attack by coating tanks or armor
or people. ... So if somebody were to touch a tank that was coated
with VX, the person could die from the contact."
Bacon said the "best defense against VX or any chemical weapon is
deterrence and that's what worked back in 1991 and that continues to
be part of our arsenal in convincing people not to use Weapons of Mass
Destruction."
Beyond that, he said, the United States "is in the process of
deploying new and better protective suits" to its forces. "We have
better detection devices that we're putting out into the field, so we
have done a lot since 1991 to improve our ability first to detect the
use of deadly chemicals or biological agents, and two, to protect our
people against them should they be used."
The Defense Department spokesman said the UN Special Commission
(UNSCOM) will make a presentation on its findings to the UN Security
Council on Wednesday, June 24.
(For more information on this subject, contact our special Iraq
website at:
http://www.usia.gov/iraq)