[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 15 (Wednesday, February 25, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S952-S955]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              IRAQ POLICY

  Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, the world witnessed a diplomatic success 
in United Nation's Secretary General Kofi Annan's trip to Baghdad last 
weekend. We saw a successful conclusion to an episode that has been and 
probably will continue to be a very long drama of confrontation with 
Iraq. This success is not due solely to Mr. Annan's considerable powers 
of persuasion. Mr. Annan's mission was backed by force--by the real, 
credible potential for violent punishment from U.S. forces if a 
diplomatic solution was not achieved. He said this about his successful 
negotiations: ``You can do a lot with diplomacy, but of course you can 
do a lot more with diplomacy backed up by firmness and force.'' It 
takes nothing away from Mr. Annan's success to note he shares star 
billing as a peacemaker with the soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines 
of the United States.
  The smile of diplomacy combined with the force of the gun has 
produced an offer from Baghdad to allow U.N. weapons inspectors into 
sites previously denied to them by the Iraqi government. For the moment 
there is hope that air strikes to reduce Iraq's capacity to use weapons 
of mass destruction will not be needed. Gratefully, for now, we will 
not again be witnesses to the necessary violence of combat. The images 
of war, which increasingly shape and limit our national tolerance for 
war, will thankfully not supplant Seinfeld on our TV screens this week.
  And yet our gratitude for peace is not entirely satisfying. A sour 
taste remains in our mouths. We wonder again if Saddam Hussein has got 
the better of us. The question nags: Did we win a diplomatic battle but 
not the war? These feelings and this question flow from our national 
discussion of Iraq policy over the past several weeks, especially the 
growing realization that America should not deal with the Iraq problem 
episodically, but rather with finality, even if greater effort is 
required.
  This problem was eloquently stated last Wednesday at Ohio State 
University by a veteran. He said:

       I spent twenty years in the military; my oldest son spent 
     twenty-five; my youngest son died in Vietnam; six months 
     later, his first cousin died in Vietnam. We stood in the gap. 
     If push comes to shove and Saddam will not back down, will 
     not allow or keep his word, are we ready and willing to send 
     the troops in? You see, I have no problem with asking any one 
     of these guys in the Armed Forces to stand in the gap for me 
     now, that we stood in the gap back then. . . . I think all of 
     Congress wants to know. Are we willing to send troops in and 
     finish the job, or are we going to do it [half-hearted] like 
     we've done before?

  Mr. President, this veteran speaks for me. He gave the nation a 
clarion call to finish the job. It falls to us to determine what 
finishing the job means. We must do so with the understanding that 
wherever and however we stand in the gap, our stand and our actions 
will be globally public. All of us who are given power by the 
Constitution to declare war and raise armies must take note of how much 
is won or lost over the airwaves.
  We will not restrict the flow of images in the next war as we have in 
the past. The recently released CIA report on the Bay of Pigs thirty-
six years after the report was written, represents the old way of 
making: war in secret. The new way is portable video cameras and 
satellite communications opening the battlefield to full view. And 
victory may hinge more on the impressions of the battle conveyed 
through the media than on the effect of the combatants themselves. Even 
if the struggle is only diplomatic, it is no less public and global, 
and the impression made on the public who witness the struggle through 
the media is at least as important as the diplomatic outcome.
  Television images are powerful and effect all who watch. Two and one-
half billion people watched Princess Diana's funeral. Perhaps as many 
watched the war of words between the U.S. and Iraq. I am concerned that 
to date, we may be losing this battle of the airwaves. A ruthless 
dictator who has starved and brutalized and robbed his people for over 
twenty years actually appears in some media to be more interested in 
the welfare of his people than do we. To win, we must have an objective 
that is clear, will justify war's violence if war comes, and will 
enable us to rally world opinion. We need a mission that puts us in the 
gap not just to reduce a threat but to liberate a people and make a 
whole region secure and prosperous. We need a cause which will unite 
moral leaders like Nelson Mandela, and Vaclav Havel with other 
political and military leaders. We need an objective which will 
permanently remove the threat the Iraqi dictatorship poses to the 
United States, to our allies, to our interests, to its neighbors, and 
to its own people.
  The containment of Iraq--although it has been a success--cannot be 
such a cause. Containment reduced the Iraqi military threat and 
introduced UNSCOM inspections, which are our principal means of 
limiting Saddam's production of weapons of mass destruction. But the 
ultimate failure of containment is signaled by the word ``reduce'' as a 
policy goal. With biological weapons, reduction or limitation are not 
sufficient. We need to be sure such weapons are eliminated from 
Saddam's arsenal. To ``reduce'' is not enough.
  Let me say a word about the fear that has been aroused over the 
potential of biological weapons, both Iraqi weapons and possibly such 
weapons in the hands of terrorists in this country. Fear is a natural 
reaction, but fear is also the great debilitator. Fear keeps us from 
taking necessary action. We must manage our fears, we must keep fear 
from paralyzing us, and we must realistically measure the threat posed 
by these weapons. If we are to truly stand in the gap with regard to 
Iraq, we must do something hard: we must have a broader perspective 
than just altering our fear of biological weapons. We must transcend 
that fear and convert it into a hope for freedom. A democratic Iraq is 
certainly in our interest, an Iraq free of weapons of mass destruction 
is certainly in our interest, but it is above all for the sake of the 
Iraqis that we must replace Saddam.
  A review of what Saddam has done to his people underscores the need 
to remove him. After over 20 years of Saddam, it is hard to recall that 
Iraq was once the heart of the Fertile Crescent, a country blessed with 
oil resources, rich agricultural potential, and a vibrant middle class. 
Through a disastrous war with Iran and then the invasion of Kuwait, 
Saddam mortgaged and then caused the destruction of much of Iraq's oil 
capacity. Through static economic policies, he marginalized a middle 
class which has since been almost wiped out by the effect of sanctions, 
which is to say, by the effect of Saddam's behavior. Per capita income 
in Iraq has dropped from $2,900 in 1989 to $60 today, in currency 
terms. The dinar, which was worth three dollars in 1989, is now at the 
rate of 1,500 to one dollar. Iraqis have seen their salaries drop to 
five dollars a month, and their pensions evaporate. We are also 
familiar with the starvation and the permanent health crisis he imposes 
on his people while he builds palaces and other grandiose monuments to 
himself.
  Saddam's policies have killed hundreds of thousands of Iranians and 
Iraqis and thousands of Kuwaiti citizens, many of whom are still 
unaccounted for. His reign of terror continues to kill, including 
between 500 and 1,200 prisoners murdered in his prisons last December. 
His weapons of mass destruction, with which we are too familiar, were 
tested on living human beings, according to British press reports. In 
sum, if there is a dictator in the world who needs to be removed, it is 
Saddam Hussein.

[[Page S953]]

  Force, either our own or that of dissident Iraqis, will be required 
to remove this regime. But in my view, Desert Storm is not the model. A 
much better example of the marriage of military force with diplomacy, a 
success story in the making, is the U.S. deployment to Bosnia. An 
initial agreement was reached at Dayton as a result of the use of U.S. 
military force. Then our troops led an allied force into the country 
and provided, and continue to provide, the overarching security and 
stability beneath which a traumatized people regain the confidence to 
govern themselves democratically and live civilly with each other. The 
lesson of Bosnia is that force persuaded diplomacy, which has in turn 
given the people of Bosnia a chance for a lasting peace. Iraq, with its 
devastated middle class and ethnic divisions, may need the same kind of 
long-term application of potential force, once Saddam's regime has 
passed.
  It took hope, at the worst moments of the Yugoslav war, when Sarajevo 
was a deadly obstacle course for its citizens, to dream of a peaceful 
Bosnia, and it took courage to make the commitments which are now 
slowly bringing that dream into reality. In the same way, we must get 
past our pessimism about Iraq and the Middle East, summon our hope, and 
dream the successful outcome of our policy: a democratic Iraq. Imagine 
its characteristics: a democratic Iraq would be at peace with its 
neighbors. It would have no weapons of mass destruction. A democratic 
Iraq would enjoy the benefits of its agricultural and oil wealth and 
would share them equitably across their society. A democratic Iraq 
would be a tolerant society, in sharp contrast to some of its 
neighbors. It would not oppress its minorities. Its Kurdish population, 
secure and free in northern Iraq, would not be a base for an insurgency 
against Turkey. A democratic Iraq would be a powerful example to the 
rising oil states of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan, a proof 
to them that a government can use oil revenue for something other than 
hiring police and buying weapons.
  There is a dissonant sound to the words ``Iraq'' and ``democracy'' 
side by side, but this dream, aided by a sound American strategy, can 
become real. I know of no genetic coding that predisposes the Iraqis, 
or any people, to dictatorship. In November, I laid out a road map 
which included the following steps and I repeat them today.
  First, we must convince our core European and Asian allies that 
democracy, not just the temporary compliance of a dictator, is the 
right long-term goal for Iraq. We must use the facts about Saddam's 
brutality to convince our allies to support a transition to democracy 
in Iraq, and to convince them the security and economic opportunity 
that would flow out of a new, democratic Iraq is worth more than the 
money owed our allies by Saddam's regime. In other words, we must 
convince our allies to forgive the debts of a post-Saddam Iraq. Beyond 
debt forgiveness, we should clearly state the loan and foreign 
assistance preferences which a democratic Iraq would receive from U.S. 
and multinational lending agencies.
  Second, we should fill Iraqi airwaves, by means of Voice of America 
and commercial means, with the horrific truth about Saddam's regime. 
The Iraqi people must learn that we know what Saddam has done to them, 
and that weapons of mass destruction are not our sole concern. Two 
recent news stories exemplify the kind of information we should be 
putting in every Iraqi home. The first, from the Los Angeles Times for 
February 9, describes the murder of up to 1,200 prisoners in Iraq's 
main prison. The second, from the January 18 Sunday Times of London, 
relates in detail how Saddam's government tested biological weapons on 
human beings. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent both these these 
articles be printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See exhibit 1.)
  Mr. KERREY. Third, we should openly and consistently state our goal 
of a free, democratic Iraq, even if we have to state it repeatedly for 
years. To accept less and say less is simply unworthy of our heritage.
  Mr. President, there are additional steps which are essential if we 
are to achieve our goal:
  We should announce our intention to see Saddam Hussein indicted and 
tried for war crimes and genocide.
  As some commentators have suggested, the United States should form an 
umbrella organization of pro-democracy Iraqi exile groups and support 
them with money and military supplies.
  When the exile group seizes significant Iraqi territory, the United 
States should recognize it as Iraq's government and make frozen Iraqi 
government funds available to it.
  The UN has already decided to expand the amount of oil Iraq can sell 
in exchange for food and medicine. We should work with the UN to 
facilitate greater amounts of life's necessities getting into the hands 
of the Iraq people. Over the long term, we should consider the 
usefulness of sanctions in overthrowing Saddam. The debilitating effect 
of sanctions on ordinary Iraqis may actually help keep Saddam in power. 
Our policies should serve the strategy of removing this dictator from 
office and creating the democratic Iraq and peaceful Middle East which 
is our goal.
  Mr. President, I am laying out what could be a long road for the 
United States. But when you compare today's situation with tomorrow's 
possibilities, it is a road worth taking. It is a road worthy of our 
heritage as liberators and as a free people. Mr. Annan carefully 
selected these familiar words to describe the U.N.'s success this week: 
``We the peoples of the world can do anything if united.'' We have 
dreamed the possibility. Now it is time for us to make it real.
  I yield the floor.

                               Exhibit 1

               [From the Los Angeles Times, Feb. 9, 1998]

         Freed Inmate Tells of Mass Executions at Iraqi Prison

                         (By John Daniszewski)

       Amman, Jordan--Ammar Shehab Dein shudders at the memory of 
     the ``meals'' served up at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison 
     outside Baghdad.
       A ``meal'' is what guards there called the Iraqi prison's 
     periodic mass executions. ``We have a meal tomorrow,'' they 
     would taunt the terrified inmates.
       During the last 20 days in December, said Shehab Dein, 
     there were at least three ``meals'' in his section alone. 
     Each time, an officer would stand in front of the two-story 
     cellblock and read off the names of those who were to die.
       The doomed men would then have their hands tied behind 
     their backs and be led away--crying, shouting, ``Allahu 
     Akbar'' (God is great) and, in some cases, cursing the name 
     of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
       Later, other inmates would be ordered into the execution 
     chamber to clean up.
       As it was described to Shehab Dein, the chamber was 
     ``primitive,'' ropes suspended over 12 wells. Bound prisoners 
     would be put into a noose and then pushed to their deaths, he 
     said. Doctors were present mainly to determine if the 
     prisoners were dead.
       Shehab Dein, a 27-year-old Jordanian trader who was 
     imprisoned last year, is not only a rare survivor of the 
     Iraqi leader's death row. In interviews with The Times, he is 
     also the first released inmate of Abu Ghraib prison to 
     publicly corroborate and add detail to accounts that emerged 
     at the end of 1997 of a series of executions of hundreds or 
     even thousands of political prisoners and common criminals in 
     Iraq.
       At the time, U.S. State Department spokesman James Foley 
     called the reports of mass execution ``horrific'' and said 
     they would constitute ``a gross violation of human rights'' 
     if true.
       Shehab Dein's statements were supported by a second 
     released inmate, a 31-year-old Jordanian businessman who said 
     he was badly tortured shortly after his 1995 arrest and that 
     he fears being identified by name.
       ``The last weeks before Ramadan, we heard [that] about 500 
     people were killed. . . . We used to hear them [executions] 
     every day,'' the businessman said.
       Both men were interviewed in Amman days after their Jan. 21 
     release in a surprise amnesty, announced by Hussein, for all 
     Jordanian prisoners. (Hussein declared a further amnesty 
     Thursday for all nationals of other Arab countries, 
     apparently in a goodwill gesture hours after he met with the 
     secretary-general of the Arab League.)
       According to Iraqi opposition sources in Jordan, Britain 
     and the United States, Hussein's regime executed 800 to 1,200 
     inmates at the Abu Ghraib and the Radwaniyah prisons, both 
     near Baghdad, in a cleaning out that began Nov. 20 and lasted 
     into December.
       After the State Department raised the issue Jan. 1, the 
     Iraqi Information Ministry angrily denied the accusations, 
     calling them another example of the ``hostile propaganda'' of 
     Iraq's opponents.
       With the world focused on Iraq's standoff with the United 
     States and the United Nations over access to disputed sites 
     by arms inspectors, the allegations have elicited relatively 
     little attention.
       But the experiences of the two Jordanians, who went to Iraq 
     voluntarily for business and say they once were sympathetic 
     to Hussein, nevertheless are a reminder of the unpredictable 
     brutality inside Iraq.

[[Page S954]]

       ``If I had a choice between dying and going back to Iraq, I 
     would prefer to die,'' said the businessman, who declined to 
     discuss details of his torture except to say: ``Execution was 
     something I wanted.''
       Since mid-December, opposition groups have been circulating 
     accounts of the executions, which they said were ordered Nov. 
     19 by Hussein's powerful younger son, Qusai, and underscore 
     his preeminent role in the spheres of ``security and 
     repression,'' in the words of one opposition newsletter.
       The Iraqi National Congress, a U.S.-backed anti-Hussein 
     group, has compiled lists identifying 160 of the victims.
       It said one brother of an executed Iraqi Kurd had to comb 
     through 12 cold-storage rooms containing 30 bodies apiece 
     before he was able to find his sibling and claim the remains. 
     The opposition Iraqi Communist Party, meanwhile, said that 
     109 of its followers apparently were killed in one day.
       Decreed at a time when Iraq appeared to have driven a wedge 
     between the United States and other U.N. Security Council 
     members, the executions may have been ordered to celebrate 
     this diplomatic ``triumph on the part of Saddam Hussein,'' 
     speculated the Iraqi Broadcast Corp., the oppositions' radio 
     station in northern Iraq.
       Neither Shehab Dein nor the businessman actually saw any 
     hangings, but both stated without hesitation that hundreds of 
     their fellow inmates died.
       Shehab Dein's younger brother, Jihad, and that when he 
     visited his brother in prison in December, he saw other 
     families collapse in sobs and wails upon learning that loved 
     ones had been executed. He was once told that he should leave 
     the prison because a round of executions was about to take 
     place, he said.
       Shehab Dein, who lived with his family in Iraq for most of 
     the past six years, was arrested Sept. 9 and sent to Abu 
     Ghraib on Dec. 10 after being condemned to death for 
     allegedly buying up cheap construction equipment in Iraq to 
     be dismantled and smuggled out for sale abroad.
       Although Shehab Dein and his five brothers buy and sell 
     heavy machinery, he denies being a smuggler and blames his 
     arrest on a false accusation from a business rival who stood 
     to get a significant chunk of Shehab Dein's assets as a 
     reward from the Iraqi regime.
       As soon as he arrived at Abu Ghraib after three months in a 
     cell in Baghdad's Public Security Department, Shehab Dein 
     said, he was told by fellow inmates about the mass executions 
     that had been taking place.
       ``Between November and December, they used to take 50 
     people, 80 people a day,'' he said. ``It was not something 
     normal.''
       From Dec. 10 until Dec. 30, when executions were stopped in 
     observance of the start of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, 
     Shehab Dein said, he saw or heard a total of 56 men dragged 
     away--27, 15 and 14 at a time.
       None ever returned to his section, which housed more than 
     1,000 people who had been sentenced to death for various 
     crimes, ranging from corruption to theft to murder.
       He said he believes that prisoners from other sections, 
     including political prisoners and those containing people 
     sentenced in long prison terms but not death, were being 
     executed daily. Among those killed, he said, was a friend he 
     had made earlier at the Public Security Department cells, a 
     likable would-be counterfeiter whom he knew as ``Eyad the 
     Palestinian.''
       Eyad's name was among those called out one morning, and he 
     was led out with his hands tied behind his back.
       ``They allowed him to say goodbye to his friends,'' Shehab 
     Dein said quietly. ``Eyad came to me right away because I was 
     the only other Palestinian. He said, `Forgive me if I have 
     done anything wrong, and give charity in my name if you have 
     the chance.'
       ``I cannot describe to you the feeling--someone saying that 
     to you. What I thought was, how dear he was to me, and I was 
     helpless to give him any consolation,'' he said.
       Shehab Dein said prison conditions were appalling.
       He was in a 5-foot-square cell with three other condemned 
     men. They took turns sleeping. But that was ``paradise'' 
     compared with other cells of the same dimensions packed with 
     seven or eight prisoners.
       He said he was sentenced to die based on a confession he 
     never made and upon the written testimony of two 
     ``witnesses'' whom he had never met and who were not even 
     present at his trial.
       Iraq executed four Jordanian students Dec. 9 for smuggling, 
     despite repeated entreaties from Jordan's King Hussein that 
     they be spared.
       Shehab Dein, who had been condemned Dec. 7, said he 
     believed that he surely would be the next to die. But he got 
     a reprieve when Saddam Hussein suddenly ordered all 
     Jordanians in his prison let go, apparently to mollify 
     Jordanian anger.
       ``I thought I was dead,'' Shehab Dein murmured, recalling 
     the moment he learned that he would escape the noose. ``But I 
     was reborn.''
                                                                    ____


             [From the London Sunday Times, Jan. 18, 1998]

               Saddam Tested Anthrax on Human Guinea Pigs

                   (By Marie Colvin and Uzi Mahnaimi)

       Evidence has emerged that Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi 
     dictator, has had prisoners tied to stakes and bombarded with 
     anthrax in brutal human experiments with his biological and 
     chemical armoury.
       Dozens of prisoners are believed to have died in agony 
     during a secret programme of military research designed to 
     produce potent new weapons of mass destruction.
       In one incident, Iranian prisoners of war are said to have 
     been tied up and killed by bacteria from a shell detonated 
     nearby. Others were exposed to an aerosol of anthrax sprayed 
     into a chamber while doctors watched behind a glass screen. 
     Two British-trained scientists have been identified as 
     leading figures in the programme.
       As the first details of Iraq's use of human guinea pigs 
     came to light, Saddam threatened yesterday to expel United 
     Nations weapons inspectors unless they complete their work 
     within six months. The British aircraft carrier Invincible is 
     sailing for the Gulf to support American forces.
       Saddam's biological and chemical warfare programme is at 
     the heart of his latest confrontation with the UN, which 
     began when a team of inspectors was prevented from visiting 
     Abu Gharib jail, near Baghdad, to investigate evidence that 
     some prisoners were sent to a military facility for 
     experimentation two years ago.
       The Sunday Times has obtained evidence about the programme 
     from several sources, including UN inspectors, Iraqi 
     dissidents and Israeli intelligence. The evidence suggests 
     that tests on human beings began in the 1980s during Iraq's 
     eight-year war with Iran after initial experiments on sheep 
     and camels.
       According to Israeli military intelligence sources, 10 
     Iranian prisoners of war were taken to a location near Iraq's 
     border with Saudi Arabia. They were lashed to posts and left 
     helpless as an anthrax bomb was exploded by remote control 15 
     yards away. All died painfully from internal haemorrhaging. 
     In another experiment, 15 Kurdish prisoners were tied up in a 
     field while shells containing camel pox, a mild virus, were 
     dropped from a light aircraft. The results were slower but 
     the test was judged a success; the prisoners fell ill within 
     a week.
       Iraqi sources say some of the cruellest research has been 
     conducted at an underground facility near Salman Pak, 
     southwest of Baghdad. Here, the sources say, experiments with 
     biological and chemical agents were carried out first on dogs 
     and cats, then on Iranian prisoners.
       The prisoners were secured to a bed in a purpose-built 
     chamber, into which lethal agents, including anthrax, were 
     sprayed from a high-velocity device mounted in the ceiling. 
     Medical researchers viewed the results through fortified 
     glass.
       Details of the experiments were known only to Saddam and an 
     inner circle of senior government officials and Iraqi 
     scientists educated in the West.
       Madeleine Albright, the American secretary of state, said 
     Saddam was ``tightening the noose around himself''. She 
     added, ``By not letting this inspection team go forward, in 
     almost a strange way it's almost as if he has come close to 
     saying, `Okay, you caught me'.''


                      iraq tested anthrax on pow's

       They started with domestic cats and dogs. But the 
     scientists at Salman Pak, a military complex 50 miles 
     southwest of Baghdad, were under pressure from President 
     Saddam Hussein to prove the potency of the technology that 
     would underpin their new weapons of mass destruction. It was 
     inevitable that their experiments would eventually be 
     conducted on human beings.
       From behind a reinforced glass screen they watched as, one 
     by one, Iranian prisoners of war were strapped to the bed in 
     a chamber at the underground facility.
       The terror of their victims as a high-velocity device 
     mounted on the ceiling dispensed a lethal spray can only be 
     imagined. Sometimes it contained anthrax bacteria, which 
     penetrate the skin and lungs. The prisoners died in agony 
     from internal hemorrhaging.
       At other times the aerosol was of toxins suitable for use 
     in chemical weapons. The results were no less devastating. 
     The facility, which is understood to have been built by 
     German engineers in the 1980s, has been at the centre of 
     Iraq's experiments on ``human guinea pigs'' for more than 10 
     years, according to Israeli military sources.
       The first details of the atrocities carried out there and 
     in experiments in the open air emerged this weekend as Saddam 
     threatened to expel United Nations weapons inspectors unless 
     they complete their work within six months.
       Dozens of prisoners have died during the research. In one 
     test, 10 Iranian prisoners were taken to an open-air site 
     near Iraq's border with Saudi Arabia. There they were tied to 
     posts and left helpless while shells loaded with anthrax were 
     detonated by remote control 15 yards away. The prisoners' 
     heads were shielded to protect them from shrapnel so that the 
     effectiveness of the bacteria could be observed. All died 
     from the disease.
       In another experiment, 15 Kurdish prisoners were tied up in 
     a field while shells containing a pox virus were dropped from 
     a light aircraft. The virus was camel pox, normally a 
     relatively mild disease. Iraqi scientists, however, are 
     believed to have developed a more virulent strain by genetic 
     manipulation. All the prisoners fell ill within a week.
       The programme is the focus of Iraq's latest confrontation 
     with the UN, which began when inspectors were prevented from 
     visiting Abu Gharib jail, near Baghdad, to investigate 
     evidence that prisoners had been sent away for 
     experimentation two years ago.

[[Page S955]]

       Two of the leading researchers in Iraq's biological 
     programme studied in Britain. Rihab al-Taha, educated at the 
     University of East Anglia, is the head of Iraq's military 
     research and development institute. Another scientist, who 
     received a doctorate in molecular biology from the University 
     of Edinburgh, is said by Israeli sources to have specialized 
     in anthrax although her precise role, if any, in human 
     experiments is unknown.
       The evidence compiled by the Israelis could not be 
     independently corroborated. But it appeared consistent with 
     information about Iraq's chemical and biological programmes 
     in documents recovered by UN inspectors after the 1995 
     defection of Hussein Kamel, Saddam's son-in-law, who had been 
     in charge of Iraq's military procurement programme.
       Apparently afraid of what Kamel would reveal after he fled 
     to Jordan, Iraqi officials led the inspectors to a cache of 
     papers they said they had discovered in a shed on his chicken 
     farm in the hope that he would be blamed for the programme. 
     Inspectors raised eyebrows at the fact that the boxes were 
     shiny new while their surroundings were filthy. Kamel was 
     killed on his return to Iraq in 1996.
       Among the ``chicken farm'' documents on biological warfare 
     was a photograph of a human arm with lesions. The inspectors 
     also found video footage of dogs that had died after being 
     exposed to unidentified agents.
       Iraqi opposition sources said last week they had received 
     reports of prisoners disappearing from their cells, only to 
     return with mysterious illnesses that proved fatal.
       The prisoners, they said, were usually released out of fear 
     of contamination and died afterwards at home.

                          ____________________