Iraqi Chemical Weapon Turns Up at U.N.

Aug 30, 10:40 PM

Current Headlines: NEW YORK _ The United Nations finally found a potential Iraqi weapon of mass destruction Thursday _ in its own building on Manhattan's East Side.

Parts of the UN building were evacuated after officials found a chemical weapon mistakenly sent to the UN after being found in an Iraqi weapons plant 11 years ago.

UN deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe said several vials of potentially hazardous chemicals _ including the choking agent phosgene, which was used extensively in World War I _ were found on June 24.

Employees of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) found the chemicals as they catalogued their offices, which are slated to close next year, officials said.

Records indicated the material was from a 1996 excavation of the bombed-out research and development building at Iraq's main chemical weapons facility at Muthana, near Samarra, in the Salahuddin province.

The commission said a second package was found containing "Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) reference standards in sealed glass tubes."

UNMOVIC spokesman Ewan Buchanan said the second sealed package contained samples of chemical agents that calibrate analytical equipment that inspectors use to identify chemical agents. He said each contained less than a gram of chemical material.

Okabe said the UN has launched an investigation and that the Security Council and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon were informed.

"UNMOVIC experts believe the packages are properly secured and pose no immediate risk or danger . . ." the statement said.

The commission was created in 1999 to determine whether Iraq, under the rule of Saddam Hussein, had weapons of mass destruction. It is scheduled to closenext June.

Buchanan said there will be an investigation into how the chemicals ended up among his agency's massive inventory on the building's sixth floor.

"There is no logical reason for bringing it here," he said. "It should have gone to a lab and should have been destroyed."

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the UN should know it's a target and be more careful.

"The fact that a container of deadly poison from Iraq was found at the UN is a wakeup call," he said. "They better start living up to the higher safety standards of a post-9/11 New York."

___

(c) 2007, New York Daily News.

Visit the Daily News online at http://www.nydailynews.com/

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.