Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Iraq Said to Try to Buy Antidote Against Nerve Gas
The New York Times ^ | 11/12/2002 | JUDITH MILLER

Posted on 11/11/2002 7:23:54 PM PST by Pokey78

Iraq has ordered large quantities of a drug that can be used to counter the effects of nerve gas, mainly from suppliers in Turkey, which is being pressed to stop the sales, according to senior Bush administration officials.

The officials said the orders far outstripped the amount Iraq could conceivably need for normal hospital use, and they said Turkey had indicated in talks with the State Department that it was willing to review the matter.

"If the Iraqis were going to use nerve agents," an official said, "they would want to take steps to protect their own soldiers, if not their population. This is something that U.S. intelligence is mindful of and very concerned about."

Iraq has ordered, mainly from a Turkish company, a million doses of the drug, atropine, and the 7-inch autoinjectors that inject it into a person's leg, the officials said.

It is not clear how much, if any, of the drug has actually been delivered.

Atropine is highly effective at blocking such nerve agents as sarin and VX, both of which Iraq has acknowledged having made and stockpiled. Iraq claims to have destroyed those stockpiles, but American intelligence agencies doubt it has done so.

One official said Iraq had also placed orders for another antidote for chemical weapons, obidoxime chloride.

Officials said hospitals and clinics around the world commonly stocked atropine to resuscitate patients who have had heart attacks. As a result, atropine was not included on a list of thousands of "dual use" items that the United Nations Security Council members drafted in May that inspectors must review more carefully before they can be sold to Iraq.

The bulk purchases of autoinjectors and atropine, however, have raised concerns among chemical weapons experts, intelligence analysts and senior White House officials, who argue that atropine to counter heart attacks is normally given intravenously and in much smaller doses. Obidoxime chloride is not used at all for that purpose, one expert said.

All this, the officials and experts say, illustrates how hard it is to control dual-use products — those that have civilian purposes, yet also can strengthen a country's military. That is true even when the seller is an ally, they said.

The United States renounced the use of nerve agents and other chemical weapons in the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, pledging not to use such weapons in war, and saying it no longer has them in its arsenal. But the American armed forces do carry atropine and autoinjectors in first-aid kits in case of attack.

Iraq has not ratified the treaty that bans the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons. It used chemical weapons during its war against Iran in the 1980's and to suppress dissent among its own Kurdish citizens in the north.

White House officials have recently considered the Iraqi orders at meetings, and the State Department has tried to stop the sales through discussions with Turkey in the last two months. One official said Turkey, a NATO member and staunch American ally, had agreed to review the orders and consider the request.

In a telephone interview, Turkey's ambassador to Washington, O. Faruk Logoglu, said he was unaware of such discussions. But he added that they might well have been conducted by American Embassy and Turkish officials in Ankara, the Turkish capital, bypassing his embassy.

Administration officials declined to identify the Turkish supplier, but one official characterized the company as an important regional producer of bio-defense products and equipment with international customers.

"Atropine and autoinjectors are common products," an official said.

Administration officials said the contracts demonstrated deficiencies in the system put in place last summer to simplify the shipment of aid to Iraqi civilians under the United Nations "oil for food" program. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell extolled the new system as "smart sanctions."

Under the previous system, shipments of food, medicine and other goods that Iraq said were for civilians were routinely delayed for months while Security Council members and United Nations weapons inspectors pored over contracts to determine whether the sales could strengthen Iraq's military

The new system adopted in May allows for the sale and shipment of most goods without extensive review unless they are on the list put together by the United States, Russia, France, and other Security Council members. It took almost a year for negotiators to develop the list, because the United States wanted it to be as comprehensive as possible, while Russia and France, both large exporters to Iraq, lobbied for a shorter list.

The United States has yet to conduct a formal assessment of the new system, now just a few months' old. But officials said in interviews that they feared that Iraq was already exploiting omissions from the list.

American officials said it was becoming obvious that some items that should have been included, like the atropine and autoinjectors, had been omitted.

Iraq's military capabilities, "though far less impressive than they were before the 1991 gulf war, are becoming better through such purchases every day," a senior administration official said. "And we're seeing that the traditional mechanisms for controlling the transfer of such items — export controls, border patrols, and other sanctions — are still porous."

Technically, the list can be reopened for changes every six months, but administration officials said the State Department was reluctant to do so. "If we try to add items to that list," an official said, "Russia and France will demand that other items be subtracted from it, and we'll be back again to square one."

But the Pentagon is more willing to seek a change, officials said. If any Security Council member does want to change the list, the deadline to do so is late this month.

Dave Franz, a former director of the Army's bio-defense lab at Fort Detrick, Md., and Frederick R. Sidell, a chemical agents expert who worked at the Army Medical Institute of Chemical Defense, agreed that Iraq's orders raised concern because there were virtually no peaceful uses for that much atropine. "The Iraqis must know that we are not going to use such agents against them, because we don't have chemical weapons," Dr. Franz said.

Dr. Sidell said obidoxime chloride was not used for anything in the United States. Furthermore, autoinjectors contain five times the amount of atropine normally administered intravenously to treat malfunctioning hearts.


TOPICS: Breaking News; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS:
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-48 last
To: Nogbad
John Batchelor has gotten scoops before, hasn't he? I never see him credited later though.
41 posted on 11/12/2002 10:52:13 PM PST by Mitchell
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 40 | View Replies]

To: Mitchell
John Batchelor has gotten scoops before, hasn't he?

He has developed very strong connections with the military.
Even though he is a RINO, he is as hawkish as they come on Iraq.

42 posted on 11/12/2002 10:55:16 PM PST by Nogbad
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 41 | View Replies]

To: Nogbad
gas centrifuges to make plutonium.

Something about this doesn't ring true. Gas centrifuges are used for enriching uranium. I could be wrong, but I don't think centrifuges are used in plutonium separation. (If I remember right, plutonium is produced in nuclear reactors as a by-product of a nuclear reaction involving uranium, and the plutonium is then separated chemically.)

43 posted on 11/12/2002 11:02:24 PM PST by Mitchell
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 40 | View Replies]

To: Mitchell
Don't ask me. I gave up on physics 41 years ago.
44 posted on 11/12/2002 11:06:57 PM PST by Nogbad
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 43 | View Replies]

To: Nogbad
Well, I'm no expert on this either, but I'm fairly sure that that's the standard way of obtaining plutonium. I don't know whether there might be some other way that involves the use of centrifuges.
45 posted on 11/12/2002 11:13:08 PM PST by Mitchell
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 44 | View Replies]

To: Nogbad
A little research on this shows that North Korea's original approach (in the early 1990's) was to separate plutonium from nuclear fuel rods, along the lines I was suggesting. After the 1994 Carter agreement, the North Koreans secretly kept working on their nuclear program, but they changed their choice of nuclear material from plutonium to enriched uranium. The centrifuges that Pakistan has been accused of providing to North Korea were intended by the North Koreans to be used in enriching uranium.

As for this new report, of Pakistani assistance just this past summer, I suspect that Batchelor is right in referring to centrifuges, but incorrect in mentioning plutonium rather than enriched uranium.

46 posted on 11/12/2002 11:25:49 PM PST by Mitchell
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 44 | View Replies]

To: Dallas
the republican guard are an ARMORD division...........even Ex Iraqui government have said they can't fight an urban war.
Not to mention Sadam doesn't want them in Bagdad because some of them have spoken against him and there is word they might try and Kill him.
47 posted on 11/13/2002 11:28:51 AM PST by Cat In The Hat
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: Cat In The Hat
in regards to the Last Post.......I wasn't speaking to Dallas.........................I was speaking to another Post..............Thank You!
48 posted on 11/13/2002 11:30:44 AM PST by Cat In The Hat
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 47 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-48 last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson