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Tests Cast Doubt on Chemical Find in Iraq . . .
D. Spires — (archived)

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Tests Cast Doubt on Chemical Find in Iraq

Monday, April 28, 2003
(8:46 PM)
By Louis Meixler
Associated Press Writer

Also found at the site were two unmarked vans that soldiers first suspected to be mobile chemical laboratories. Inside the vans were three cylinders for mixing liquids and a dosage chart in English and Russian. Green camouflage netting was draped across the front of one of the vans. Lt. Col. Novikov, however, said the vans ``could be'' a rocket fuel mixing station.

http://member.compuserve.com/fotosrch/3/20030428ABL103.jpg

A soldier from a U.S. Army Fox Chemical Reconaissance team of the Tenth Cavalry Division stands up wind at a distance determined safe by his superior officer, at a site containing suspicious drums full of unknown liquid, outside Baiji, Iraq, Monday, April 28, 2003. On Sunday, U.S. military chemical weapons experts examined the site, which in preliminary tests pointed to the possible presence of nerve gas, according to a U.S. field commander.
Image Credit: Brennan Linsley -- AP

BAIJI, Iraq -- AP
A metal drum found in northern Iraq that initially tested positive for nerve and blister agents might instead contain rocket fuel, according to new tests, a U.S. chemical weapons expert said Monday.

More tests were planned in the coming days on the 55-gallon drum, said Lt. Col. Valentin Novikov, the chief chemical weapons officer of the 4th Infantry Division, the unit which found the site.

Novikov's comments raised the prospect that the discovery was the latest in a series of false alarms as U.S. troops try to find the remains of Saddam Hussein's suspected programs for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.

The suspicious barrel was among 14 barrels found in an open field near the Tigris River town of Baiji, among mounds of earth that hid missiles and missile parts. U.S. troops performed an initial test and found indications the barrel may contain the nerve agent cyclosarin and a blister agent that could be a precursor of mustard gas.
(More: Netscape Network News)
2003 © The Associated Press.

Dan

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