Iraq Says It Was Poised To Use Biological, Chemical Weapons Fear Of U.S. Nuclear Retaliation Prevented Their Use, U.N. Told

Iraq has released to the United Nations new evidence that it was prepared to use deadly toxins and bacteria against U.S. and allied forces during the 1991 Persian Gulf War to liberate Kuwait from its Iraqi occupiers, U.N. Ambassador Rolf Ekeus said Friday.

Ekeus, the chief U.N. investigator of Iraq’s weapons programs, said Iraqi officials admitted to him in Baghdad last week that in December 1990 they loaded three types of biological agents into roughly 200 missile warheads and aircraft bombs that were then distributed to key air bases and a missile site.

The Iraqis began this process the day after the U.N. Security Council voted to authorize using “all necessary means” to liberate Kuwait, Ekeus said. He said the action was akin to playing “Russian roulette” with extraordinarily dangerous weapons on the eve of war.

U.S. and U.N. officials said the Iraqi weapons contained enough biological agent to have killed thousands of people and spread horrible diseases in cities or military bases in Israel, Saudi Arabia or wherever Iraq aimed the medium-range missiles or squeaked a bomb-laden aircraft through enemy air defenses.

Ekeus said Iraqi officials claimed they decided not to use the weapons after receiving a strong but ambiguously worded U.S. warning from the Bush administration on Jan. 9, 1991, that any use of unconventional warfare would provoke a devastating U.S. response.

Iraq’s leadership assumed this meant Washington would retaliate with nuclear weapons, Ekeus said he was told. U.N. officials said they believe the statement by Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz is the first authoritative account for why Iraq did not employ the biological or chemical arms at its disposal.

Several U.N. Security Council envoys who heard Ekeus’s lengthy briefing on Iraq’s armaments program Friday expressed shock at learning how Iraq had behaved on the eve of war. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Madeleine Albright described the news as “chilling” and said it revealed for the first time “how close we came to a potential disaster.”

British Ambassador to the U.N. John Weston said he was startled by the immense scale of the Iraqi biological weapons program and “the advanced state of production and deployment” of the weapons. He said the news demonstrated the “political irresponsibility of the regime” in Baghdad controlled by President Saddam Hussein.

Both envoys indicated that the new Iraqi admissions about its biological program, as well as other new disclosures about the advanced state of its past effort to complete a nuclear weapon and develop its own missile force, will force the United Nations to postpone for a considerable period any withdrawal of the trade embargo imposed on Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait.