Iraqi WWDs Still Stored in New York

Iraqi WWDs Still Stored in New York

 

New Yorkers were stunned when a small vial of the deadly chemical warfare agent phosgene turned up at United Nations headquarters last week.

 

The vial was but one of many remnants left in storage from Iraq arms inspections conducted by the U.N. Monitoring, Observation, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and its predecessor, the U.N. Special Commission, from 1991 to 2003.

 

The incident brought squads of special hazmat police to the storage complex on East 48th St. just north of the U.N.'s main campus.

 

Confusion swirled around New York for several hours as to just what was found inside the U.N.'s archives.

 

A local newspaper shouted: "Iraqi WMD Found! In NYC!"

 

The discovery called attention to the many problems facing the U.N. regarding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

 

NewsMax has obtained a partial list of what UNMOVIC knows it still has in storage, both in New York and in another facility in Cyprus.

 

The issue has taken on importance since the Security Council opted to shut down the U.N. inspection unit last June and has given the remaining skeleton staff one more month to close its doors forever.

 

While negotiations have been underway in recent weeks between the U.N. and America’s U.N. mission regarding what should be done with UNMOVIC's remaining inventory, the fact is that many issues remain unresolved while the clock continues to tick.

 

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has ordered his international security coordinator David Veness and his chief of staff Vijay Nambiar to conduct an internal investigation to see what other potentially hazardous items the U.N. inspectors may still have in their possession that they don't know about.

 

That investigation is also believed to involve both the NYPD and the New York City bureau of the FBI, NewsMax’s United Nations correspondent Stewart Stogel reports.

 

While the hunt for more "surprises" is underway, the list of items that the U.N. has in its possession and has yet to decide how to dispose of includes:

 

One SCUD (surface-to-surface) missile engine, one SA-2 (surface-to-air) engine, 100 gyroscopes for SS-18 (ballistic) missiles, 200 chemical warfare suits and gas masks, 12 chemical weapons detectors, one biological incubator, and one biological threat screener.

 

According to U.N. sources, most of these items are still in working condition and while individually they pose no security threat, they do represent critical components for someone looking to construct a weapon of terror.

 

"Why is all this stuff still left? Why was this not destroyed years ago?" asked one veteran Iraqi diplomat.

 

That is a question the U.N. has yet to answer.

 

Source: NewsMax.com [newsmax@reply.newsmax.com]