IRAQ: Iraq has ordered large amounts of a drug which can be used to counter the effects of nerve gas, the New York Times reported yesterday, quoting Bush administration officials.
The orders, which far surpassed amounts needed for normal hospital use, were mainly from suppliers in Turkey, which is being pressed to stop the sales and has indicated in talks with the US State Department that it was willing to review the matter, the officials told the Times.
"If the Iraqis were going to use nerve agents," the newspaper quoted one official as saying, "they would want to take steps to protect their own soldiers, if not their population. . ."
Iraq has ordered a million doses of atropine and the auto-injectors which inject it into a person's leg, the officials told the newspaper. One official also told the Times that Iraq had also placed orders for another antidote for chemical weapons, obidoxime chloride.
Atropine is commonly used in hospitals around the world to resuscitate patients who have had heart attacks. The bulk purchases of auto-injectors and atropine, however, have raised concerns among chemical weapons experts, intelligence analysts and senior White House officials, who argue that atropine to counter heart attacks is normally given intravenously and in much smaller doses, the newspaper said.
Mr Dave Franz, former director of the US army's biodefence laboratory at Fort Detrick, Maryland, told the paper that such a large amount of atropine would not likely be destined for peaceful use.
Baghdad insists it has destroyed its stocks of nerve gas, but US intelligence officials have cast doubt on that, according to the Times.