YOU HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR BUT ...

 

Cleaning solvent
at UN spooks America

 

 

Chemical 'WMD' found at UN may be little more than cleaner
New York Daily News Wednesday, 5 September 2007

BY ALISON GENDAR

NEW YORK — Fooled again.

Chemicals discovered in the United Nations' Manhattan offices —
feared to be a toxic agent produced by Saddam Hussein's regime a
decade ago — may be nothing worse than a cleaning solvent, sources said yesterday.

Preliminary tests show the substance, which was found Aug. 24,
was not the potentially fatal phosgene, sources said.

"It's not phosgene, and it tested negative for all other chemical warfare agents. It's not dangerous, and it's not what they thought they had," a law enforcement source said.

UN officials discovered the chemical in a canister sealed in an unmarked plastic bag as they closed a weapons inspection agency on E. 48th St., a block from UN headquarters.

Believed to be one of Saddam's elusive WMDs

By Aug. 29, UN officials said they traced the material using inventory
sheets. They believed it was a chemical warfare agent seized by UN
inspectors in 1996 from Iraq's chemical weapons facility near Samarra.

UN officials couldn't account for why a potentially lethal chemical sat
in Manhattan for 10 years undetected.

"The first round of tests indicate some kind of solvent," another law
enforcement source said. "I guess we should be grateful it's not potentially fatal, but it just reveals another layer of mistakes."

UN spokesman Farhan Haq said he could not comment until final tests were complete.

Haq said the UN was poised to name a three-member panel to review the incident, examining how the samples were collected, stored and how they may have been misidentified.