March 05, 2004
"Where are the weapons of mass destruction?"
Looks like they're in Libya:
Libya acknowledged stockpiling 44,000 pounds of mustard gas and disclosed the location of a production plant in a declaration submitted Friday to the world's chemical weapons watchdog.
Libyan Col. Mohamed Abu Al Huda handed over 14 file cartons disclosing Libya's chemical weapons programs to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, said general director Rogelio Pfirter.
The Hague-based OPCW oversees compliance with the 1993 international treaty banning chemical weapons, which Libya joined last month.
Libya also declared thousands of tons of precursors that could be used to make sarin nerve gas, and two storage facilities, Pfirter said. The production and storage facilities were near Tripoli and in the south of the country, Pfirter said.
The declaration was a major step in Libya's eliminating its weapons of mass destruction, which it unexpectedly promised in December, hoping to end its international isolation and restore relations with the United States.
I think that destroying-another-Arab-dictatorship-with-WMD-ambitions thing might have had something to do with Libya's change of heart, too. But that's just me.
Posted by damian at March 5, 2004 04:00 PM