Posted on 09/25/2002 8:26:45 PM PDT by Ranger
A SMALL British factory making plastic bottles started an inquiry yesterday into how a cardboard box bearing its name was found at an alleged bio-weapons factory run by President Saddam Hussein.
The box was spotted at a chemical plant near Baghdad that is described in Tony Blair’s dossier as a storage centre for biological agent seed stocks.
Iraqi officials say that the Amariyah chemical plant has an innocent medical purpose: producing diagnostic material to detect typhoid and blood disorders.
The empty box was found in litter piled behind half a dozen huge red silos at the plant, 12 miles south of Baghdad. How it got there is a mystery to Pam Buckley, 76, chairman of Technical Treatments, in Sevenoaks, Kent, whose ten workers produce 20,000 bottles a day.
“It certainly wasn’t sent by us,” she said. “We do very, very little exporting. We always avoid it if we can because there’s so much paperwork. We certainly haven’t sent any to the Middle East.”
The box is reported to have a date — 10/11/97 — on the side. That would record when the bottles were manufactured. They are typically stored for between six and 12 months before being sold.
The box contained 260 bottles, each made of highdensity (unyielding) polythene, with extremely narrow necks, which make them adequate for holding liquids but unsuitable for powders.
The choice of material is curious. Polythene bottles cannot be sterilised because they buckle in heat and are unable to resist radiation. That makes them unsuitable for growing the organisms required to diagnose diseases, the Public Health Laboratory Service said yesterday. They could, however, be used for storing human blood samples.
Technical Treatments has exported bottles to Germany, Switzerland and Ireland, but it said that 99 per cent of its business was in Britain.
Anthony Coldicott, the general manager, said: “In most cases we have no idea what our customers put in them, but I know some are used for herbal remedies.”
The box is almost certain to have reached Baghdad by an illicit route. A rigorous regime of sanctions is in place that prevents British companies from supplying Saddam’s regime without an export licence from the Department of Trade and Industry.
The box was noticed after Iraq invited the media to inspect its “Serum and Vaccine Institute” in Amariyah after Mr Blair published his dossier on Saddam’s weapons ambitions.
Journalists were allowed to wander around most of the plant, although a handful of doors remained padlocked. There were some new buildings on the site, including a large warehouse. Outside stood rows of new fridges, and inside an enormous portrait of Saddam gazed down on the white-coated scientists.
“There is no biological weapons work here, and no biological weapons are stored here,” one member of staff said. “We are actually producing diagnostic material to detect typhoid and a blood disorder.”
Back in Sevenoaks, Mrs Buckley yesterday began a quest to discover how her box ended up in such a notorious location.
She believed that the bottles may be a red herring. It was possible, Mrs Buckley suggested, that the box would be useful even if it were empty by the time it reached Baghdad. “Our boxes are quite strong,” she said proudly.
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