(Telegraph-UK) Stephen Pollard - Syria has the most fearsome chemical and biological weapons arsenal of any Arab state - well beyond anything that Saddam ever had. Plants for sarin, VX, and mustard gas were set up near Damascus, Hama, Homs, Aleppo, and Latakia. In 1971, Assad established the Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC), supposedly a civilian agency to boost Syrian scientific capacity. In reality, the SSRC was the cover for the production of chemical weapons. In 1992, the German government warned German research institutes against dealing with the SSRC since it was involved in the production of chemical and biological weapons. Satellite intelligence shows that Syria's Scud-C missiles, integrated with its chemical warheads, are sited to provide the option of a first strike against Israel's nuclear reactor in Dimona, and take out airports and large cities. In April 2000, General Mustafa Talas, the defense minister, published Biological (Germ) Warfare: A New and Effective Method in Modern Warfare (which was immediately translated into Persian for publication in Teheran). Syria has long manufactured aerial bombs with sarin and has thousands of other chemical aerial bombs carried by Su-22, Su-24, and MiG-23 planes. Syria has 1,000 Scud-C missiles with a range of 300 miles and Scud-D missiles with a 450-mile range. The plan has always been to mount biological warheads on all long-range surface-to-surface missiles. The author is a senior fellow at the Centre for the New Europe in Brussels.
2003-04-15 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive