The Iraqi Biological Weapons Program - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 171

Iraq signed the BWC on 11 May 1972, well before its entry into force on
26 March 1975. The very existence of the BWC provided an external rea-
son for Iraq to be aware of the international movement to prohibit BW
and of the associated moves in Article IX to prohibit CW, and thus to con-
sider its national position in relation to such weapons.
The BW Program
The Ibn Sina Center
Iraq has stated that the response to the 1974 decree was to construct a fa-
cility, the Ibn Sina Center, at a site on the Al Salman peninsula, 30 kilo-
meters south of Baghdad. The center was made part of a newly created
organization, the Al Hazen Ibn Al Haithem Institute. Although Iraq de-
clared that construction began in 1974, the relatively unsophisticated de-
sign of the center makes it likely that planning for it began in 1973 or per-
haps even earlier.
The Al Hazen Institute was ostensibly part of the Ministry of Higher Ed-
ucation and Scientific Research, but Iraq has acknowledged that in reality
it operated under the influence of the State Security Apparatus. Iraq
stated that the work carried out at the center was basic and that little was
actually achieved, because of poor direction and management. It is not
certain that this was the case, and in fact the testimony of some of the sci-
entists at the center indicates that more was achieved than has been de-
clared.
Iraq has declared that activities at the center were terminated in 1978,
when its director and some of the leading scientists were jailed for both
scientific and perhaps financial fraud; Iraq provided documentary evi-
dence to support this. However, it appears that activities at the center,
stated by Iraq to be unrelated to BW, continued for some time into the
1980s. Although UNMOVIC interviewed Iraqis who worked in the pro-
gram, it reports that the actual nature of the continued work is not clear.
The dates of the opening and closure of the Ibn Sina Center may not
be particularly important, but its objectives and achievements are. The
achievements, particularly those that were more military related, could
have provided a sound basis for later developments, and hence shortened
the lead time for production of BW. In this regard, UNMOVIC observed