Chemicals found at UN may be harmless solvent

UNITED NATIONS, Sept 5 (Reuters) Vials of mysterious chemicals from Iraq discovered in United Nations offices last week may have been a harmless solvent rather than a toxic warfare agent, UN sources said today, quoting law enforcement officials.

But the sources, who asked not be named, told Reuters the analyses were still informal and the FBI, which carted away the substances, had not completed its report.

UN weapons inspectors announced last Thursday they had found small amounts of phosgene, a World War I chemical warfare choking agent that attacks the lungs.

The vials were brought from Iraq to New York and stored in UN offices more than 10 years ago. But the inspectors had not opened the vials and were checking an inventory sheet. They called in the FBI to analyze the chemicals.

Ewen Buchanan, a spokeswoman for the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspections Commission, known as UNMOVIC, said his group had not received any reports but would be attending a meeting on the subject later today.

Experts from the UN weapons commission said the substance, left in a metal container by UNMOVIC's predecessor, the UN Special commission, was sealed and had posed no hazard to the public. The commission's offices are in a separate building, about a block from the main UN complex in midtown Manhattan.

The inspectors discovered the vials when they dismantled their offices, which included 125 filing cabinets, the end of 16-year effort to destroy Iraq's weapons of destruction, many of which were rendered harmless in the 1990s.

The Bush administration, in an effort to justify the March 2003 invasion, had said that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein continued to produce unconventional weapons. But US investigators found no weapons.

Meanwhile UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon summoned top staff back to New York over the Labor Day weekend to set up an investigation.

UN spokeswoman Michele Montas said yesterday a three-member panel, with support staff, would be set up shortly to find out ''long the stuff had been there, how it was recovered, when it was transported and all this.'' The group would include experts ''in armaments and other chemical weapons issues,'' she said.

The information was first reported in the New York Daily News, which said the first round of tests indicated ''some kind of solvent,'' perhaps for cleaning.

REUTERS PDT KN2148