US says it finds sarin in Iraq
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-05-18 08:48

The United States, which invaded Iraq over alleged weapons of mass destruction, says an exploded artillery shell found there will be tested further to confirm indications that it was armed with sarin nerve agent.

Deputy chief of military operations in Iraq, U.S. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt addresses a press conference in Baghdad, May 17, 2004. The U.S. military said Monday an artillery shell exploded in Iraq had released a small amount of the nerve agent sarin. [Reuters]

It would be the first time any chemical weapon has been found in Iraq since the United States led an invasion of that country last year, accusing then-President Saddam Hussein of developing chemical, biological and possibly nuclear weapons.

Failure to find such weapons has stirred criticism in the United States and Britain, Washington's closest ally in the war.

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad said on Monday that initial field tests indicated that the 155mm shell contained sarin.

"Additional testing will be done outside of Iraq, more detailed testing. But the initial tests in the field show the presence of sarin," one U.S. official, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters in Washington on Monday.

Some details about sarin

"Whether the person who rigged it up as an IED (improvised explosive device) knew what they had or not is open to question," the official added.

The discovery represented the possibility of good and bad news for the Bush administration -- good that it could support long-unproven claims that Iraq possessed such weapons during the lead-up to the war, and bad that attempts are being made to use the weapons against U.S. occupiers.

A US Army soldier secures the area after finding an improvised explosive device (IED) in the center of Baghdad, Iraq, May 17, 2004. The Army used red smoke to warn people from approaching the area. [AP]

U.S. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told a news conference in Iraq that the substance had been found in an artillery shell inside a bag discovered by a U.S. convoy a few days ago. The round had exploded, causing a small release of the substance, he said.

David Kay, who last year led the post-invasion hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before stepping down, said the sarin was probably left over from the 1980s, produced either during the Iraq-Iran war or before the 1991 Gulf War.

"It was probably just scavenged from one of the 125-plus ammunition storage points that still remain," Kay said. More forensic testing should determine with some confidence when it was produced, he said.

Rumsfeld, responding to questions after a speech on Monday to the Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank, said the testing could take some time.

"I've seen intelligence on the matter you've raised. What you cited, I believe, was a field test, which is not perfect," he said. "What we ought to do is to get the samples someplace where they can be tested very carefully before coming to a conclusion as to precisely what it was."

"We have to be careful. We can't take something that's inaccurate," Rumsfeld said. "So what we have to then do is track down and figure out ... what caused that to be there in this improvised explosive device? And what might it mean in terms of the risks to our forces, the risks to other people and any other implications that one might draw.

"And that's going to take some time."

In Baghdad, Kimmitt told a news conference that two members of a U.S. explosives team had been treated for exposure to the substance.

Kimmitt said the round, designed to mix the sarin in flight, belonged to a class of ordnance that the ousted government of Saddam claimed to have destroyed before the 1991 Gulf war.

Improvised explosive devices are bombs usually planted at the side of Iraqi roads to explode as coalition vehicles pass.

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