Word: poisoned
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When Iraq used poison gas to kill Kurdish civilians last year, the U.S. joined other nations in condemning chemical warfare. But last week it became clear that at least one American company has helped spread the deadly weapons. After Customs Service agents accused Baltimore-based Alcolac International, Inc., of illegally shipping hundreds of tons of thiodiglycol, a solvent that can be used in making mustard gas, the firm agreed to plead guilty to violating export laws. Prosecutors believe the chemical shipments eventually arrived in Iraq and Iran...
Like other high-minded declarations that followed the horrors of World War I, the Geneva Protocol has no teeth: although it forbids the use of poison gases, it bans neither their production nor their stockpiling. The result is that the issue of chemical weapons has returned time and again to the international agenda, stirring debate at the United Nations, at diplomatic conferences and at each of the four superpower summits since...
This week the talk continues in Paris, where representatives from 142 nations have convened. The chances for a breakthrough anytime soon are slim. Only the U.S., the Soviet Union and Iraq have even acknowledged owning chemical arsenals. Yet in recent years, there have been claims that poison gases have been used by Libya against Chad, by Viet Nam against Kampuchean rebels and by Iran and Iraq against each other in their recently concluded war. It was Iraq's slaughter of the Kurds that prompted President Reagan to call for the Paris conference. The initiative was quickly seconded by President Francois...
...declaration of international outrage against chemical weapons and a reaffirmation of the Geneva Protocol may at least slow the trend toward poison gases. "There's a general consensus that use of chemical weapons is wrong," says William Burns, director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. "I think we want to re-establish that." The U.S. hopes that the Paris meeting will pump momentum into the Conference on Disarmament, a 40-nation effort to write a treaty that would ban the gases outright. As an interim step, several participants want to strengthen the U.N. Secretary-General's authority...
...American manufacture of chemical weapons, the Soviet Union acceded to U.S. demands for on-site "challenge inspections" to enforce a treaty. Today the larger obstacle is posed by Third World nations that are reluctant to give up what is known as the "poor man's atom bomb." Poison gases, after all, are cheap and easy to manufacture. "All a terrorist needs is a milk bottle of nerve gas," says a British weapons expert, "and that he can get from a quiet lab in a back street of Tripoli." Thus even if a treaty could be hammered out to the satisfaction...