Found, Gaddafi's Chemical Weapons

KOMPAS.com - A secret cache of Colonel Gaddafi’s chemical weapons has been found in Libya, the country’s new rulers announced yesterday.

The deadly arsenal proves the tyrant had refused to give up his weapons of mass destruction – despite promising Tony Blair he would relinquish them in the infamous ‘Deal in the Desert’.

The National Transitional Council said the chemical warheads had been secured and would be made safe by experts.

A spokesman said: ‘They are from the Gaddafi era and are under guard until they can be handed over.’

To this day, Mr Blair defends his decision to embrace Gaddafi by trumpeting the idea that he forced the dictator to give up his WMD programme.

His spokesman said earlier this week: ‘Mr Blair, in office, had been responsible for getting Gaddafi to give up his chemical and nuclear weapons programme and renounce terrorism.’

Gaddafi agreed to destroy most of his weapons of mass destruction in 2003 as part of moves to bring Libya, then a pariah state, in from the cold. The agreement was sealed in 2004 when Mr Blair shook hands with Gaddafi in a tent outside Tripoli.

The disarming process was being overseen by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, but was never finished because of the outbreak of war.

It meant the dictator retained around ten tons of deadly mustard gas and other chemicals.

Throughout the uprising, rebels feared vengeful Gaddafi – who warned they faced the ‘fires from Hell’ – would unleash WMD on his own people.

In Misrata, panic gripped the population when forces loyal to Gaddafi were seen wearing gas masks. Nato spy planes and satellites monitored suspected chemical weapons dumps at three separate locations, including the Rughawa site some 130 miles south of the tyrant’s birthplace Sirte.

Nato is still flying sorties over Libya, mainly in an effort to hunt down Gaddafi’s London-educated playboy son Saif, last seen making a dash for the desert border with Niger. Libya’s new leaders yesterday begged Nato to continue with the mission.

Mustafa Abdul Jalil, chairman of the National Transitional Council, said he wanted Nato help until ‘the end of the year’ in stopping Gaddafi loyalists fleeing justice.

But at the Brussels headquarters of the alliance, Nato officials recalled their UN mandate was to protect civilians, not target individuals.

A meeting of Nato ambassadors was postponed from yesterday until tomorrow to allow for further discussion, but is still expected to endorse a decision to halt the Libya mission on October 31.

Meanwhile former Libyan foreign minister Musa Kusa – who defected to Britain – issued a fierce denial yesterday that he had any ‘involvement of any kind or knowledge’ of the Lockerbie bombing and the murder of WPC Yvonne Fletcher.

Kusa issued a statement through legal representatives in London following allegations made on the BBC’s Panorama programme. The programme, broadcast on Monday, claimed he personally tortured prisoners and was involved in the 1996 massacre of more than 1,200 inmates at the country’s notorious Abu Salim prison.

Kusa, who made a high-profile defection to Britain in March as Colonel Gaddafi’s regime crumbled, accused programme-makers of making ‘false allegations’, claiming: ‘I have never tortured anyone nor been involved in torture. Neither was I present at the massacre at Abu Salim prison.’

He added: ‘I also had no involvement of any kind or knowledge of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988 or the murder of WPC Fletcher in 1984.

‘I have voluntarily assisted the relevant investigatory authorities with their inquiries in relation to these matters.’

Kusa is now in Qatar, having been permitted to leave Britain, following an EU decision to lift sanctions against him.

He was head of Colonel Gaddafi’s intelligence agency from 1994 and was reported to be a senior intelligence agent when Pan Am flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie, killing 270 people.