The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
580.
Mr Butler
stated that he would also be giving the report to Iraq’s
Permanent
Representative
to the UN in New York, asking him to transmit it to the authorities
in
Baghdad.
Mr Butler also wrote that the Commission would be willing “to
resume work
at the
earliest possible moment with competent Iraqi authorities in order
to address the
questions
posed by the report”.
581.
The report
recommended that Iraq be invited to explain:
“… the
presence of degradation products of nerve agents … [T]he presence
of
compound
known as VX stabiliser and its degradation product, and to provide
more
information
on the Iraqi efforts during the period from mid-1998 to the end of
1990 to
develop and
produce VX by improved synthetic routes.”233
Mr Butler’s
report included a report of a meeting of international experts on
VX, held in
New York on
22 and 23 October. The report revisited the sequence of events
in relation to
VX sampling
as follows.
In April
1997, following Iraq’s declaration of a VX production facility and
a dump site
where agent
had been disposed of, samples of equipment and soil at the site,
taken and
analysed in
the US, were found to contain VX degradation products as well as
compounds
known as VX
stabiliser and its degradation products. This was confirmed in
further
analysis of
samples from the same site in February 1998.
The US
laboratory was also asked to analyse samples of 46 fragments from
45 “special
warheads”
to verify Iraq’s declaration that 25 had been filled with
biological agent and 20
with a
mixture of “alcohols” (isopropanol and cyclohexanol).
In June
1998, the laboratory reported to UNSCOM that it had found chemicals
similar to
those found
at the VX dump site.
In July
1998, UNSCOM asked the US laboratory to analyse samples from
different
fragments
from the 20 warheads Iraq had declared had been filled with
alcohols.
No chemical
warfare compounds were found, but degradation products from
a
decontamination
compound were found in five samples. In addition “signatures
of
unidentified
non-phosphorous compounds were found in many samples”.
A French
laboratory analysing samples from 40 different fragments from the
same 20
warheads
reported the presence of a degradation product from a “G- or V-”
nerve agent in
one
sample.
A Swiss
laboratory analysing samples from the same 40 fragments did not
find any
chemical-warfare-related
chemicals.
Both the
French and Swiss laboratories identified chemicals known to be the
degradation
products of
a decontamination compound and found that a large number of the
samples
contained
the same unidentified non-phosphorous compounds as the US
laboratory had
identified.
233
UN Security
Council, 26 October 1998, ‘Report of the Group of
International Experts on VX’
(S/1998/995).
132