Iraq tested a bomb in 1987 that cast a radioactive cloud in the open air and was designed to cause vomiting, cancer, birth defects and slow death, according to a secret Iraqi report on the weapon's construction and testing, cited by New York Times.
The paper said Sunday that it obtained the document from the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, a private group in Washington that said it acquired it from a UN official.
Radiation sickness from the bomb, the document said, would "weaken enemy units from the standpoint of health and inflict losses that would be difficult to explain, possibly producing a psychological effect." Death, it added, might occur "within two to six weeks.”
The bomb, 12 feet long and weighing more than a ton, according to the document, could be dropped on areas used by troops, industrial centers, airports, railroad stations, bridges and "any other areas the command decrees.”
The United Nations rarely discloses documents gathered in Iraq, but David Albright, formerly a nuclear inspector in Iraq, said he had seen the document and that he did not doubt it is authentic, said the report.
He and other experts agreed that the document, which is to be posted on a Web site Monday, gives away no secrets that could aid weapons development and gives no indication that the project was a resounding failure.
Nuclear experts say that Iraq today neither has programs to develop radiological weapons nor the reactors needed to make radioactive materials for them, and no fuel for nuclear arms. But the inspectors are largely gone, and experts worry that Iraq may be shopping for bomb fuel and parts on the black market – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
