Basson not off to Iraq

2003-02-17 11:13

Johannesburg - South African chemical and biological war expert Wouter Basson said he was not expecting to be one of the team of experts in dismantling weapons of mass destruction to Iraq as part of Pretoria's bid to avert war.

President Thabo Mbeki announced on Friday that South Africa would send a team of experts.

He said on Sunday there had been no decision on who would be in the team and is expected to announce the scientists' names on Monday or Tuesday.

Asked in an SABC interview on Monday whether he would be going to Iraq, Basson said: "Not as far as I know."

He said he did not think of himself as "one of the best".

"The president said he had better people. He must be right."

Basson, who headed apartheid South Africa's 1980s germ warfare programme, was acquitted by Pretoria Judge Willie Hartzenberg on a string of charges in April 2002.

He said when he had briefed United States and United Kingdom intelligence agencies on the South African programme, called Project Coast, they had been "impressed".

"I was involved in one of the most extensive chemical and biological (warfare) programmes, according to some intelligence agencies (the US and UK)," he said.

Basson said he had visited Iraq on several occasions during his tenure as chief of Project Coast. In 1986, when the US was funding and aiding the Iraqi chemical and biological warfare programme, it was "reasonably basic", but by 1989 it had become "rather good". However, the 1991 Gulf War had destroyed the programme.

Basson said his last visit to Iraq had been in 1995 when there was "a bit of a start up programme". He said that programme faced "practically insurmountable problems, including United Nations sanctions.

"Everything is four or five times more expensive under those circumstances, and the quality of what you get is not the best."

He said a major problem was that dispersal techniques involved complicated processes.

South Africa is maintaining its stance that war in Iraq must be avoided unless sanctioned by the UN.

In a media briefing on Saturday deputy foreign minister Aziz Pahad, just back from a visit to Iraq, said every effort had to be made for a peaceful solution in Iraq, or the world would face a "nightmarish" situation of a "pandora's box of terrorism" being opened and vast economic and other repercussions. No country would remain unscathed, including South Africa.

He said Iraqi President Saddam Hussein assured him during a lengthy meeting that Iraq had no more weapons of mass destruction. However, it was the job of the UN weapons inspectors to determine whether this was true.

Referring to Mbeki's announcement that South Africa intended sending its experts to Iraq, Pahad said there had been no "negative response" to the proposal. Consultations as to who would go were currently under way.

South Africa was the only country in the world to have voluntarily dismantled its own nuclear and chemical-biological warfare capacity and experts who were actually involved in this process could "share their experience" with the Iraqis, Pahad said.

- SAPA