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Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction - The Assessment of the British Government

• al-Dawrah Foot and Mouth Vaccine Institute which produced botulinum toxin and conducted virus research. There is some intelligence to suggest that work was also conducted on anthrax;
  
  
• al-Fudaliyah Agriculture and Water Research Centre where Iraq admitted it undertook aflatoxin production and genetic engineering;
  
  
• Amariyah Sera and Vaccine Institute which was used for the storage of biological agent seed stocks and was involved in genetic engineering.
  

3. By the time of the Gulf War Iraq was producing very large quantities of
   chemical and biological agents. From a series of Iraqi declarations to the UN during the 1990s we know that by 1991 they had produced at least
   

• 19,000 litres of botulinum toxin, 8,500 litres of anthrax, 2,200 litres of aflatoxin and were working on a number of other agents;
  
  
• 2,850 tonnes of mustard gas, 210 tonnes of tabun, 795 tonnes of sarin and cyclosarin, and 3.9 tonnes of VX.
  
  

4. Iraq's nuclear programme was established under the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission in the 1950s. Under a nuclear co-operation agreement signed with the Soviet Union in 1959, a nuclear research centre, equipped with a research reactor, was built at Tuwaitha, the main Iraqi nuclear research centre. The research reactor worked up to 1991. The surge in Iraqi oil revenues in the early 1970s supported an expansion of the research programme. This was bolstered in the mid-1970s by the acquisition of two research reactors powered by highly enriched uranium fuel and equipment for fuel fabrication and handling. By the end of 1984 Iraq was self-sufficient in uranium ore. One of the reactors was destroyed in an Israeli air attack in June 1981 shortly before it was to become operational; the other was never completed.
   
   
5. By the mid-1980s the deterioration of Iraq's position in the war with Iran prompted renewed interest in the military use of nuclear technology. Additional resources were put into developing technologies to enrich uranium as fissile material (material that makes up the core of a nuclear weapon) for use in nuclear weapons. Enriched uranium was preferred because it could be more easily produced covertly than the alternative, plutonium. Iraq followed parallel programmes to produce highly enriched uranium (HEU), electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS) and gas centrifuge enrichment. By 1991 one EMIS enrichment facility was nearing completion and another was under construction. However, Iraq never succeeded in its EMIS technology and the programme had been dropped by 1991. Iraq decided to concentrate on gas centrifuges as the means for producing the necessary fissile material. Centrifuge facilities were also under construction, but the centrifuge design was still being developed. In August 1990 Iraq instigated a crash programme to develop a single nuclear weapon within a year. This programme envisaged the rapid development of a small 50 machine gas centrifuge cascade to produce weapons-grade HEU using fuel from the Soviet research reactor, which was already substantially enriched, and unused fuel from the reactor bombed by the Israelis. By the time of the Gulf War, the crash programme had made little progress.
   
   
6. Iraq's declared aim was to produce a missile warhead with a 20-kiloton yield and weapons designs were produced for the simplest implosion weapons. These were similar to the device used at Nagasaki in 1945. Iraq was also working on more
   

    

    

    

• experimented with high explosives to produce implosive shock waves;
  
  
• invested significant effort to understand the various options for neutron initiators;
  
  
• made significant progress in developing capabilities for the production, casting and machining of uranium metal.

SCUD missiles The short-range mobile SCUD ballistic missile was developed by the Soviet Union in the 1950s, drawing on the technology of the German V-2 developed in World War II. For many years it was the mainstay of Soviet and Warsaw Pact tactical missile forces and it was also widely exported. Recipients of Soviet-manufactured SCUDs included Iraq, North Korea, Iran, and Libya, although not all were sold directly by the Soviet Union.

7. Prior to the Gulf War, Iraq had a well-developed ballistic missile industry.
   Many of the missiles fired in the Gulf War were an Iraqi modified version
   of the SCUD missile, the al-Hussein, with an extended range of 650km. Iraq had about 250 imported SCUD-type missiles prior to the Gulf War plus an
   unknown number of indigenously produced engines and components. Iraq was working on other stretched SCUD variants, such as the al-Abbas, which had a range of 900km. Iraq was also seeking to reverse-engineer the SCUD engine with a view to producing new missiles. Recent intelligence indicates that they may have succeeded at that time. In particular, Iraq had plans for a new SCUD-derived missile with a range of 1200km. Iraq also conducted a partial flight test of a multi-stage satellite launch vehicle based on SCUD technology, known as the al-Abid. Also during this period, Iraq was developing the Badr-2000, a 700-1000km range two-stage solid propellant missile (based on the Iraqi part of the 1980s CONDOR-2 programme run in co-operation with Argentina and Egypt). There were plans for 1200–1500km range solid propellant follow-on systems.
   

The use of chemical and biological weapons

8. Iraq had made frequent use of a variety of chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq War. Many of the casualties are still in Iranian hospitals suffering from the long-term effects of numerous types of cancer and lung diseases. In 1988 Saddam also used mustard and nerve agents against Iraqi Kurds at Halabja in northern Iraq (see box on p15). Estimates vary, but according to Human Rights Watch up to 5,000 people were killed.
   
   
9. Iraq used significant quantities of mustard, tabun and sarin during the war with Iran resulting in over 20,000 Iranian casualties. A month after the attack on Halabja, Iraqi troops used over 100 tonnes of sarin against Iranian troops on the al-Fao peninsula. Over the next three months Iraqi troops used sarin and other nerve agents on Iranian troops causing extensive casualties.

The Attack on Halabja On Friday 17th March 1988 the village of Halabja was bombarded by Iraqi warplanes. The raid was over in minutes. Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against his own people. A Kurd described the effects of a chemical attack on another village: "My brothers and my wife had blood and vomit running from their noses and their mouths. Their heads were tilted to one side. They were groaning. I couldn't do much, just clean up the blood and vomit from their mouths and try in every way to make them breathe again. I did artificial respiration on them and then I gave them two injections each. I also rubbed creams on my wife and two brothers."

(From "Crimes Against Humanity" Iraqi National Congress.)

Among the corpses at Halabja, children were found dead where they had been playing outside their homes. In places, streets were piled with corpses.

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