Iraq Tells of Chemical Arms Cache : Military: Baghdad reportedly details its arsenal in complying with U.N. terms. It says it still possesses 52 Scud missiles but has no biological or nuclear weapons.

Iraq told the United Nations on Thursday that it does not have biological armaments or nuclear weapons materials but that it still possesses chemical arms and 52 ballistic missiles, diplomats said.

Complying with the tough terms of the U.N. Security Council’s resolution formally ending the Persian Gulf War, Iraq delivered two letters--one to U.N. headquarters, the other to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna--outlining what it said was its remaining inventory of weapons of mass destruction.

According to a preliminary translation from Arabic of the first letter, a highly technical document, Iraq said its remaining arsenal contains 30 chemical and 23 conventional warheads for its Scud missiles, one source said. The second letter, on Iraq’s nuclear capabilities, claimed that it possesses no capacity to build nuclear armaments.

The letter delivered here, according to diplomats familiar with its contents, supplied a list of rocket launchers, launch pads and fuel-storage facilities. The diplomats said Iraq told the United Nations that it has one regular Soviet-made, 200-mile-range Scud missile and 51 Hussein missiles, which are a modification of the basic Scud with roughly double its range.

Iraq’s inventory, which still must be confirmed by on-site inspection, suggests the clear possibility that both Israel and Saudi Arabia could have come under chemical attack during the Persian Gulf War.

Iraq was known to possess chemical weapons and, in fact, had used them during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, once to bomb part of its own Kurdish population. Throughout the early part of the Gulf War, both Israelis and Saudis feared that the Scud missiles raining down on them on an almost-daily basis would one day carry poison gas.

By the war’s end, no gas warheads had been launched, and many defense strategists speculated that Saddam Hussein’s military had not used chemicals because it lacked the technology to attach them to missiles.

Under the terms of the formal cease-fire adopted April 3 by the Security Council, mass-destruction weapons must be eliminated under international supervision, and continuing inspection will ensure that Iraq does not buy or develop nuclear armaments. The importing of weapons will be prohibited by continuing sanctions against Iraq.

At the State Department, officials said Iraq’s letter on nuclear materials “falls short of the requirements” imposed by the U.N. resolution.

“In any case,” said one Bush Administration official, “the resolution calls for on-site inspections, and I’m sure we will be recommending places for the inspectors to look.”

Iraq’s envoy to the United Nations delivered the 14-page Arabic letter on missiles and chemical and biological weapons to the office of Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar. Other Iraqi diplomats gave the note on nuclear arms to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, which will carry out on-site inspection of Iraq’s nuclear capabilities.

The inventory was the first step in a process that puts President Hussein’s government under some of the strictest postwar supervision in military history.

Iraqi Ambassador Abdul Amir Anbari said the letter he delivered at U.N. headquarters shows that Iraq still has chemical weapons and ballistic missiles in its arsenal. He said he does not think his nation possesses any biological weapons.

After delivering the letter, signed by Iraq’s foreign minister, Anbari was asked if his nation still possesses Scud missiles.

“I should think so,” he said, explaining that the letter contained mentions of missiles.

Anbari also confirmed that the letter discussed chemical weapons, but he said he does not believe that it mentioned any biological weapons.

“If I remember correctly, no, we don’t,” he said referring to biological weapons. During the war, U.S. bombs destroyed what Iraq claimed was an infant-formula plant and what allied commanders charged was a biological-weapons factory.

Diplomats said the letter contained a detailed table listing Iraq’s missiles and descriptions of their backup facilities.

The letter also presented legalistic arguments protesting the United Nations requirement that Iraq disclose all its weapons of mass destruction.

Officials said neither of Iraq’s two letters will be made public. But diplomatic sources said that in the letter to the atomic energy agency, Iraq claimed that whatever atomic program it still possesses was designed purely for peaceful use.

That contention met with skepticism by some U.S. officials.

“I think that view is disputed,” said a key member of the U.S. delegation here. “It’s not how we see the world.”

Kuwaiti Ambassador Mohammad Abulhasan--whose country’s occupation by Iraq touched off the Persian Gulf crisis last August--told The Times that Iraq said it has 52 missiles and that parts of the letter contained much detail. He noted, however, that some of the document was taken up with legalistic arguments, and he expressed the opinion that Iraq should have stuck to the required information on its remaining weapons systems.

The Security Council’s resolution had set April 18 as the deadline for Iraq to submit the locations and specifications of its mass-destruc tion weapons.

Anbari charged that the council’s cease-fire resolution was “one-sided” because the problem of weapons is a regional concern.

But he said Iraq will cooperate with United Nations inspectors.

“They can go wherever they would like to go and check for themselves,” he said.

The April 3 resolution established a 120-day timetable for the dismantling of Iraq’s weapons.

The resolution, to which Iraq has formally agreed, decrees that Iraq will not acquire or develop nuclear weapons systems or manufacturing or development facilities for nuclear arms.

The Baghdad government is required to accept on-site inspection and the “destruction, removal or rendering harmless” of any nuclear weapons materials.

Baghdad had previously turned down queries from the International Atomic Energy Agency about the whereabouts of its stockpile of enriched uranium. During the war, the country’s two small nuclear reactors were destroyed by allied bombs.

By May 8, Perez de Cuellar’s office and the IAEA must present to the Security Council its plan for a commission to inspect Iraq’s weapons.

IAEA inspectors visited Iraq last November to scrutinize the nation’s two reactors, a 5-megawatt plant provided by the Soviet Union and a 0.5-megawatt research reactor provided by France.

Soon after the United States destroyed the reactors in January, the IAEA began pressing Iraq to disclose what had happened to the enriched uranium in the reactors.

Allied officials feared that Iraqi scientists could have moved the material in anticipation of the bombing, which U.S. environmental experts said does not appear to have caused any release of radioactivity.

Ambassador Anbari said he had not seen the letter his government presented Thursday to the IAEA in Vienna.

But it was understood from both U.S. and U.N. officials that the letter said Iraq has no nuclear weapons or weapons-grade material not already covered under IAEA safeguards.

One U.N. source said that officials at the atomic agency were “a little bit disappointed” by Iraq’s reply.

A U.S. official offered a tougher assessment.

“It is a lot less than minimal,” he said, noting that Iraq’s letter said all its nuclear materials were for commercial reactors.

The arms control provisions stand at the heart of the cease-fire resolution and give the United Nations an unprecedented role in the peacekeeping process.

The resolution, the longest and most complex in the 45-year history of the United Nations, provides for the progressive lifting of sanctions if Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction are rendered harmless and if the Baghdad government accepts the border between Iraq and Kuwait set in 1963 and pledges not to commit or support international terrorism.

U.S. officials noted that the measure is designed to take steps the United Nations has never attempted--to take possession of and destroy a defeated country’s chemical and biological weapons and ballistic missiles and nuclear arms materials.

The two letters that Iraq provided Thursday were the first major step in that complex process.

Times staff writer David Lauter in Washington contributed to this article.

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