The Iraqi Biological Weapons Program - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 188

by the ISG and debriefing of Iraqi personnel, we have reached the con-
clusion that prior to the war the Iraqi regime:
a. Had the strategic intention of resuming the pursuit of prohibited
weapons programmes, including if possible its nuclear weapons pro-
gramme, when United Nations inspection regimes were relaxed and
sanctions were eroded or lifted.
b. In support of that goal, was carrying out illicit research and develop-
ment, and procurement, activities, to seek to sustain its indigenous capa-
bilities.
c. Was developing ballistic missiles with a range longer than permitted
under relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions; but did not
have significant—if any—stocks of chemical or biological weapons in a
state fit for deployment, or developed plans for using them. 19
Analysis
Iraq has gone to considerable lengths to prevent the UN and others from
gaining an accurate or comprehensive appreciation of its WMD pro-
grams, with particular efforts being made to conceal its BW programs.
There is very little, if any, reliable information available about the strat-
egy or the objectives of the Iraqi BW program. Indeed, Iraq's strategy in
relation to UNSCOM and UNMOVIC seems to have been to limit disclo-
sures to what Iraq judged that UNSCOM and UNMOVIC were likely to
know already from other sources. UNSCOM considered the successive
“full, final, and complete declarations” (FFCD) made by Iraq incomplete
and technically inconsistent.
A technical evaluation meeting (TEM) dealing with all aspects of Iraq's
BW program was held in Vienna on 20-27 March 1998 and involved 18
experts from 15 countries. Considerable information about the Iraq BW
program is in the TEM report, which highlights the deficiencies in the
Iraqi FFCD. The TEM concluded that “Iraq's FFCD is judged to be incom-
plete and inadequate...Theconstruction of a material balance, based
primarily on recollection, provides no confidence that resources such as
weapons, bulk agents, bulk media and seed stocks have been eliminated.
The organizational aspects of the BW program are not clear and there is
little confidence that the full scope of the BW program is revealed. Addi-
tional aspects, such as the existence of dormant or additional BW pro-