Posted on 10-6-2003
Balloon
Goes Up On Blair
by Peter Beaumont and Antony Barnett, The Observer, Sunday 08
June 2003
- Saddam's trucks were for balloons, not germs and may well have been
sold to Iraq by British.
Tony Blair faces a fresh crisis over Iraq's alleged weapons of mass
destruction, as evidence emerges that two vehicles that he has repeatedly
claimed to be Iraqi mobile biological warfare production units are
nothing of the sort.
The intelligence agency MI6, British defence officers and technical
experts from the Porton Down microbiological research establishment have
been ordered to conduct an urgent review of the mobile facilities,
following US analysis which casts serious doubt on whether they really
are germ labs.
The British review comes amid widespread doubts expressed by scientists
on both sides of the Atlantic that the trucks could have been used to
make biological weapons.
Instead The Observer has established that it is increasingly likely that
the units were designed to be used for hydrogen production to fill
artillery balloons, part of a system originally sold to Saddam by Britain
in 1987.
The British review follows access by UK officials to the vehicles which
were discovered by US troops in April and May.
'We are being very careful now not to jump to any conclusions about these
vehicles,' said one source familiar with the investigation. 'On the basis
of intelligence we do believe that mobile labs do exist. What is not
certain is that these vehicles are actually them so we are being careful
not to jump the gun.'
The claim, however, that the two vehicles are mobile germ labs has been
repeated frequently by both Blair and President George Bush in recent
days in support of claims that they prove the existence of Iraq's weapons
of mass destruction.
During his whistle stop tour of the Gulf, Europe and Russia, Blair
repeatedly briefed journalists that the trailers were germ production
labs which proved that Iraq had WMD.
But chemical weapons experts, engineers, chemists and military systems
experts contacted by The Observer over the past week, say the layout and
equipment found on the trailers is entirely inconsistent with the
vehicles being mobile labs. Both US Secretary of State Colin Powell, when
he addressed the UN Security Council prior to the war, and the British
Government alleged that Saddam had such labs.
A separate investigation published by the New York Times yesterday
discloses that the trailers have now been investigated by three different
teams of Western experts, with the third and most senior group of
analysts apparently divided sharply over their function.
'I have no great confidence that it's a fermenter,' a senior analyst said
of a tank supposed to be capable of multiplying seed germs into lethal
swarms. The government's public report, he said, 'was a rushed job and
looks political'. The analyst had not seen the trailers, but reviewed
evidence from them.
Another intelligence expert who has seen the trailers told the US paper:
'Everyone has wanted to find the "smoking gun" so much that
they may have wanted to have reached this conclusion. I am very upset
with the process.'
Questions over the claimed purpose of trailer for making biological
weapons include:
- The lack of any trace of pathogens found in the fermentation tanks.
According to experts, when weapons inspectors checked tanks in the
mid-Nineties that had been scoured to disguise their real use, traces of
pathogens were still detectable.
- The use of canvas sides on vehicles where technicians would be
working with dangerous germ cultures.
- A shortage of pumps required to create vacuum conditions required for
working with germ cultures and other processes usually associated with
making biological weapons.
- The lack of an autoclave for steam sterilisation, normally a
prerequisite for any kind of biological production. Its lack of
availability between production runs would threaten to let in germ
contaminants, resulting in failed weapons.
- The lack of any easy way for technicians to remove germ fluids from
the processing tank.
One of those expressing severe doubts about the alleged mobile germ labs
is Professor Harry Smith, who chairs the Royal Society's working party on
biological weapons.
He told The Observer 'I am concerned about the canvas sides. Ideally, you
would want airtight facilities for making something like anthrax. Not
only that, it is a very resistant organism and even if the Iraqis cleaned
the equipment, I would still expect to find some trace of it.'
His view is shared by the working group of the Federation of American
Scientists and by the CIA, which states: 'Senior Iraqi officials of the
al-Kindi Research, Testing, Development, and Engineering facility in
Mosul were shown pictures of the mobile production trailers, and they
claimed that the trailers were used to chemically produce hydrogen for
artillery weather balloons.'
Artillery balloons are essentially balloons that are sent up into the
atmosphere and relay information on wind direction and speed allowing
more accurate artillery fire. Crucially, these systems need to be mobile.
The Observer has discovered that not only did the Iraq military have such
a system at one time, but that it was actually sold to them by the
British. In 1987 Marconi, now known as AMS, sold the Iraqi army an
Artillery Meteorological System or Amets for short.
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