Sudan Link to Illegal Arms Long Suspected

Long before the United States used cruise missiles to destroy what its intelligence sources identified as a chemical weapons factory in Khartoum, arms experts at the United Nations and around the world suspected the Sudanese government of collaborating with scientists from Iraq, Iran and other countries to develop such weapons.

Those suspicions, however, did not harden into evidence until U.S. intelligence agents recovered what U.S. officials describe as soil samples from around the plant containing a telltale element indicating production of the lethal nerve gas VX.

U.S. intelligence analysts believe Iraq supplied the formula and much of the know-how for the Sudanese plant’s alleged work on chemical weapons, a U.S. official said Tuesday.

Some analysts suspect that Iraq was using the plant to move part of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons program overseas in a kind of joint venture with the Sudanese, with the aim of evading U.N. efforts to dismantle the Iraqi program. But that has not been proved, the official said.

“There is only one country in the world that uses this recipe for VX, and that’s Iraq,” said the official, who requested anonymity. “That’s not proof that will stand up in court, but it’s strong evidence.”

The difficult and controversial search for proof of Sudanese complicity in VX production--and the circumstantial evidence linking Iraqi officials to the factory that U.S. missiles destroyed Thursday--illustrates the difficulties facing disarmament officials and the intelligence community in battling the worldwide threat of chemical arms.

U.S. and foreign intelligence services, opposition figures in Sudan and U.N. weapons inspectors have received clues in recent years that the Sudanese government was experimenting with developing chemical weapons. But previous reports have focused on production of mustard gas, not the far more deadly nerve agent VX, and although several sites in Sudan have been pointed to as possible facilities for developing chemical weapons, the Shifa Pharmaceutical plant struck Thursday was not among them.

In fact, prior to the bombing, the Defense and State departments had never publicly identified Sudan as a chemical weapons threat, according to Jonathan B. Tucker, director of the chemical and biological weapons section of the Center for Nonproliferation at California’s Monterey Institute of International Studies.

But Sudan’s weapons program has long been regarded as “shrouded in absolute secrecy,” Tucker said in a telephone interview.

For example, U.N. weapons inspectors who were charged after the 1991 Persian Gulf War with dismantling Iraq’s chemical arms program have for months believed that the Iraqi government might have transferred some of its research and production capacity to Sudan. Their interest, however, focused not on the plant that was attacked but on a smaller, more heavily guarded facility elsewhere in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital. The U.N. inspectors have been unable to act on those suspicions because they have no firm evidence enabling them to demand answers from Sudanese officials or to investigate facilities there.

Iraq denies any involvement in chemical weapons production in Sudan--a denial repeated Tuesday by Nizar Hamdoun, Iraq’s ambassador to the United Nations--so the most likely way for the inspectors to establish such a link would be to find documentation in Iraq that would confirm their suspicions. Since Aug. 5, however, the Hussein regime has ceased cooperating with most U.N. disarmament activities in Iraq.

Other indications of Iraq’s involvement include the presence of Iraqi officials at the plant for its “grand opening” in 1996, the U.S. official said. One of the Iraqis believed to have visited the plant was Emad Ani, described as the father of the Iraqi chemical arms program.

Sudanese and Iraqi officials flatly deny that the Shifa factory was involved in chemical weapons production, and they have been backed by some Westerners familiar with the plant. The Sudanese government said the plant manufactured antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals, and has invited the United Nations to conduct an independent study to determine the validity of U.S. claims.

As evidence of the facility’s benign purpose, Sudan notes that, in January, it was granted a $199,000 contract to provide about 26,000 gallons of animal vaccine to Iraq under the U.N. program that permits the Hussein government to sell limited amounts of oil and use the proceeds to purchase food and medicine distributed under U.N. supervision. However, U.N. officials say the medicine never was delivered, and chemical weapons experts say pharmaceutical plants can be easily switched from legitimate purposes to weapons production and back.

Tucker of the Monterey Institute said that if the chemical O-ethylmethylphosphonothioic acid was recovered from the site of the bombed factory, as U.S. officials contend, it would be conclusive evidence that VX, or at least precursors of VX, were manufactured or stored there. “It’s about as close to VX as you can get without having a toxic chemical,” he said.

He added that traces of the chemical remain in the soil for an extended period, so that if the U.N. agrees to a fact-finding mission and is given free access to the site, it should be able to determine if the chemical is or was present.

Meanwhile, a British businessman who said he was employed by the owners of the pharmaceutical plant to manage it and their other holdings in Sudan said in a telephone interview with The Times on Tuesday that the facility could not have been used to manufacture or store chemical weapon precursors.

Tom Carnaffin, reached at his home in Hexham, England, said he managed the Sudanese properties of the Baaboud family, whom he described as the Saudi Arabia-based principal owners of the plant. Carnaffin said he was at the plant frequently during his 4 1/2-year stint, which ended in December 1996.

“I was very familiar with what was going on,” he said. “It wasn’t even a prime manufacturer of chemicals at all, and it was very small.”

Although he has had no connection to the plant since the end of 1996, Carnaffin said he has remained in contact with the Baaboud family and is certain they would have no connection with weapons production. He also noted, as have sources in Khartoum, that there was no extraordinary security at the plant and that visitors were permitted throughout it.

“If there were something improper going on, they would not have given people free access,” Carnaffin said.

Turner reported from the U.N. and McManus from Washington.