Inspectors destroy Iraqi mustard gas shells
Chemical weapons experts headed into the Iraqi desert today to destroy their first batch of banned Iraqi weapons – 10 leftover artillery shells filled with burning, disabling mustard gas.
Working with an Iraqi team, the UN specialists will take four or five days to eliminate the 155 mm mustard gas-filled shells. Baghdad, meanwhile, prepared to outlaw such weapons through national legislation as demanded by the United Nations.
A team of chemical specialists, working with Iraqi counterparts, began neutralising the chemical shells at the al-Muthanna State Establishment, Iraq’s main chemical weapons research and production facility in the 1980s.
It was a piece of unfinished business from the 1990s, when previous UN inspectors located the shells, but failed to destroy them.
The legislation also amounts to unfinished business, demanded years ago under UN resolutions that banned chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs in Iraq. After talks last weekend with the chief UN arms inspectors, the Iraqis pledged to pass such a law in the coming days.
The National Assembly, which closely follows the dictates of Saddam Hussein, will convene in special session on Friday afternoon. The purpose was not announced, but it presumably will rush through the ban on weapons of mass destruction.
