Word: barbouti
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Seated in the coffee shop of a London hotel, the stocky, goateed 61-year-old Iraqi businessman tortures his well-worn black worry beads. "I don't want to lie to you," Ihsan Barbouti tells the interviewer in his charmingly imperfect English, then adds disconcertingly, "and I don't want to tell you the truth also at the same time." Asked whether he ever dealt in deadly weapons, he says, "I have done nothing bad. I don't deal with arms. Arms dealing is the opposite of my character. But I don't deal with something else...
What may be even more "against the health" is Libya's chemical-weapons plant, which U.S. intelligence officials say was masterminded by Barbouti. In an interview with a TIME correspondent, the amiable Dr. Barbouti, as he prefers to be called, readily admits he was the designer and prime contractor for the entire Rabta complex -- with the exception of what he describes as the "pharmaceutical" plant. Barbouti insists that his only involvement with this facility was to sell building materials to the Libyans and that he had no inkling the plant might be used for sinister purposes...
Western intelligence sources scoff, saying they have clear evidence that Barbouti was the key broker for the chemical factory. Though they have yet to find proof that he knew the Libyans planned to make nerve gas there, at least one official flatly labels Barbouti "the central villain" of the plot and "the subject of intense scrutiny for some time." In fact, both the Swiss and West German governments are conducting criminal investigations of his role in the Libyan project, and tax authorities in England and Scotland are looking into his Byzantine business affairs...
Since, as Barbouti explains, he wants neither to lie nor to tell the truth, the details of the story he relates may be subject to considerable refinement. He says he was born to a wealthy Iraqi family, studied architecture in Zurich and Vienna and received a doctorate in West Berlin (hence "Doctor"). He taught architecture at Baghdad University in Iraq, ran a private consulting business there, invested in banking, insurance and industry, and served as a sometime government adviser. In 1969, a year after the Baath Party came to power, Barbouti fled the country, fearing that he might be arrested...
...working 365 days for them, any time they need me," he says. "And I have to make this Rabta project. I saw it as a nice object, very clean, a big one. And I say, 'Why not?' And I start planning with them the technology center." What Barbouti may not have known was that the Libyans had sought a chemical-weapons capability as early as 1978; by 1984 they had already bought the compounds needed to produce such weapons in bulk. Now Barbouti was about to help Gaddafi realize his dream...