Sunday, March 6, 2011

The specter of chemical weapons "Gaddafi could use them"

The IAEA, the UN nuclear watchdog agency, is worried. She does not trust Gaddafi: diplomatic isolation, trade, the alternating phases of the battles could push it to some extreme action. Pull out and used chemical weapons during the bombing. He would have done in Chad in 1986. The Colonel rules out its use.

Two weeks ago, in the early days of the war, was quick to deny any project stragista: "I could also use the mustard gas. But I will not kill my people." The phrase has puzzled the inspectors in Vienna. We know that the Libyan leader agreed in 2003 to empty their arsenals with weapons of mass destruction.

But this statement, rather than reassuring, it sounds like a threat. In his typical speech, Gadhafi reminded the former enemies, now friends then and now new players who have concealed weapons. The rollback, the great plan for the destruction of 25 tons of sulfur mustard, ammunition of 3,500 gas Sarin and Soman, 300-C long-range Scud missiles, was completed in 2007.

But no one today is able to ensure that everything is deleted. In fact, people swear to the contrary. The former Libyan Justice Minister Abdel Jalil Musatafà, at the head of the National Council of the rebels, denounced it clearly: "Gaddafi still has large stocks of chemical weapons. Surely the nerve gas, anthrax, perhaps the same, and we fear a genetically modified form of smallpox.

"The Director General of the IAEA, Yukiya Amano, moved immediately. He asked the assistance of military satellites and has begun to look at the sites sensitive. In a paper recently submitted to the Agency's board, will show the dangers of an extreme act of Colonel. Gaddafi have many stocks of precursor chemicals.

Chloroethanol, sodium sulphide, phosphorus trichloride, and thionyl chloride. In part imported them before sanctions in 1989, partly produced them in Rabta, a facility 65 km south-west of Tripoli passed off as a pharmaceutical factory. The inspections found that the U.S. and Britain behind the medicine for AIDS and Tuberculosis was hiding the largest production center of nitrite throughout the Arab world.

They jumped out thousands of tons of mustard gas. They were seized and destroyed. To overcome the mistrust of Bush, who did not want to abolish the embargo, Gaddafi asked the 'Blair's help, got it in exchange revealed that the oasis of Tarhunah Sabha and there were still two factories of death, recently dismantled.

Hundreds of machines were lying abandoned in the desert. The inspectors were stunned: Gaddafi was managed to work around them despite three years of inspections. Now there is a growing distrust. The IAEA believes that in Libya there are no more weapons of mass destruction. But he knows nothing of precursor chemicals.

Used with bombs are bad, assembled become dangerous. And then there's the small reactor Tajura, between Tripoli and Al Kums. There is uranium-235 enriched to 20 per cent, too little for a bomb. But if it were bombed or blown up, an area of one hundred kilometers would be contaminated by radiation.

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