Yugoslavia Has Long-Standing Poison Gas Program
by Karel Knip
Rotterdam NRC Handelsblad 24 Apr 99 pp 1, 5
Rotterdam -- At the beginning of this month, UCK fighters claimed
that the Serbs in Kosovo were using hallucinogenic gases against
them. President Clinton responded with the comment that Belgrade
knows very well that the use of nerve gases represents an
escalation of the conflict.
The Geneva Protocol, drawn up in 1925 and signed in 1929 by Yugoslavia,
a nation founded just 11 years previously, bans the use of chemical
weapons, of "asphyxiating and poisonous gases," as they were called at
the time. This is the only treaty against the use of chemical weapons
that Yugoslavia has signed. The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), signed
in 1993, which bans not just the use but also the development and
production of chemical weapons, came just too late for Yugoslavia in its
old form. The new Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) has so far not
signed the treaty.
This is a painful truth, because since 1993 it has been known that the
old Yugoslavia had a very extensive chemical weapons program. Its extent
was revealed quite unexpectedly in December 1993 by Croatian Professor
Zlatko Binenfeld during a symposium in Warsaw on implementing the CWC.
Binenfeld, a Yugoslav Army adviser with the rank of general, was attached
to a laboratory for organic chemistry at Zagreb University. Now dead, he
published works on nerve gas as early as 1966 and during the 1970's
regularly attended conferences in the West.
For insiders it cannot have been any secret that Yugoslavia was working
on nerve gases. The medical database Medline contains an astounding
number of articles (most from Serbo-Croatian magazines) on research into
the working of defense against the typical nerve gases tabun, sarin,
soman, and VX, reports on mustard gas and BZ, and in particular on
cyanide poisoning.
Most of the articles were written by researchers from Belgrade attached
to the Military Technical Institute. In Ljubljana (Slovenia) and Zagreb
(Croatia) the two other centers of research into defense against chemical
weapons were clearly less closely linked to the Army. But none of the
Medline articles refer to any technical production details, although an
article in the Journal of the Serbian Chemical Society gives the
impression that production is taking place.
In the years following Binenfeld's revelations in 1993 it has been
possible to build up a more complete picture. The increasing US interest
in Yugoslavia resulted in the Bosnia Country Handbook that contained new
information. The US human rights organization Human Rights Watch, which
itself carried out a great deal of revealing research in Yugoslavia and
published its findings in March 1997, and the company Applied Science and
Analysis Inc. owned by US Colonel Richard Price, have done a lot of work
to further disseminate the information. The Federation of American
Scientists has also recently become involved.
The various reports largely correspond. Yugoslavia first began producing
gases for military purposes in 1958. The principal research and
production center was close to Mostar in Herzegovina. When it became
clear that Mostar would lie outside the new Yugoslavia (it is in the
Republic of Bosnia), production at this site ceased on 1 January 1992. A
year later the installation was dismantled and moved to Lucani in Serbia,
to the existing Milan Blagojevic explosives factory (since destroyed by
NATO). A large storage depot for methylphosphonyldichloride (a raw
material for sarin and soman) in Hadzici near Sarajevo was also moved to
Lucani. Three other nerve gas production sites were already to be found
in Serbia: at the site of the large Prva Iskra concern in Barie (near
Belgrade) and at the Merima and Miloje Zakie plants in Krusevac. Merima
produces principally detergents, soap, glycerol, fatty acids, and
cosmetics and perhaps makes, or rather made, raw materials which were
further processed by Miloje Zakic. Miloje Zakic was known as a producer
of tires, gunpowder, and dynamite. Prva Iskra was on the NATO target
list, but it is not clear whether or not it has been destroyed. A report
by the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) published in January 1998
expressed concern about the ecological consequences of bombing poison gas
plants.
It is not completely clear what chemical weapons are now being produced
where. The aforementioned sources report that the total Yugoslav chemical
weapons arsenal contains sarin, mustard gas, BZ, and the tear gases CN
and CS (all in large quantities), together with quite traditional
products such as phosgene, chlorine picric acid, cyanogen chloride,
adamsite, lewisite, and other materials, often only in laboratory
quantities. BZ (also known as QNB) is a dangerous hallucinogenic also
produced by the United States in the 1950's and 1960's, but quickly
discontinued and destroyed due to its unreliability.
It is also established that Yugoslavia has incorporated the chemical
products in weapons: in bombs, grenades, missiles, and mines. It is also
said that in the past they have even been tested, close to Mount Krivolak
in Macedonia. There are also well-documented reports of close cooperation
between Iraq and Yugoslavia in missile development and chemical weapon
production.
The important question is how reluctant Yugoslavia was and is regarding
the use of chemical weapons. Has the Yugoslav Army ever used nerve gases?
It is more or less certain that in 1995 Muslim defenders of the Bosnian
town of Zepa were attacked with a highly irritating gas which forced them
to leave their trenches. The impression is that it was a modern form of
tear gas. This was not lethal but the after-effects lasted several days.
There are also persistent rumors, circulated by Human Rights Watch in
particular, that Muslim citizens and soldiers seeking a safe refuge after
the fall of Srebrenica, were attacked with BZ grenades. HRW has deduced
this from in-depth interviews with 35 victims of the suspected attack.
The hallucinations and sudden aggressiveness after total lethargy are
both indications that it was BZ.
But it is notable that the British researcher Dr. Alastair Hay of Leeds,
who conducted the interviews, writes in his own report (Med. Confl.
Surviv., April-June 1998) that it is possible that the mental phenomena
were the result of stress, exhaustion, hunger, and drinking contaminated
water. Much less documented is the rumor that chemical weapons were used
against the Bosnian Muslims between 1992 and 1995: mortar grenades
containing chlorine gas manufactured in Tuzla.
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