U.S. Removing Nerve Gas From W. German Base

A closely guarded truck convoy Thursday began taking away a vast cache of deadly nerve gas secretly stored by the United States near this small West German town for more than 20 years.

West German authorities said someone phoned in a bomb threat against the toxic convoy but that the transport of the first shipment of nerve gas proceeded without any hitches.

It was the beginning of the end for the United States’ sole chemical weapons’ depot in Europe--a huge arsenal of 102,000 artillery shells covertly bunkered here since the Cold War days as a deterrent against Soviet aggression.

Clausen residents breathed a collective sigh of relief while watching the removal of deadly chemical weapons whose existence they were told about just a few months ago.

The lethal cargo, destined for destruction on an atoll in the Pacific Ocean, is being removed under a 1986 U.S.-West German agreement. The operation is costing $83 million.

A massive security operation guarded the cargo as a convoy of nearly 80 military vehicles left the U.S. Army depot at Clausen.

Police helicopters followed the convoy, and West German paramilitary squads stood in fields along the highway, or manned positions on overpasses.

At Miesau, in the southwest, the containers are to be loaded onto special trains that will take them to Nordenham, on the North Sea, where they will be placed aboard U.S. Navy ships for transport to Johnston Atoll.

The weapons will be destroyed at a later date in a specially built incinerator on the U.S. atoll, 800 miles southwest of Hawaii.