
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 13, 1991                   TAG: 9102130515
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

NEVER AGAIN?/ HOW IRAQ GOT ITS POISON GAS

ACTING presumably out of a mixture of embarrassment and collective remorse over its role in aiding Iraq's unconventional war-making capacity, Germany recently agreed to deliver $670 million in military aid to Israel. Among the supplies it is sending are gas masks, poison-gas antidotes and gas-proof vehicles.

Israel needs these things in part because German companies and technicians helped Iraq develop its chemical-weapons industry and a reportedly huge arsenal of chemical and nerve agents. German technicians also are said to be responsible for extending the range of Iraq's Soviet-supplied Scud missiles. This advance brought western Israel within the Scuds' reach.

In other words, Israeli Jews are threatened by poison gas delivered with German help. The irony is both inescapable and monstrous. It is well that the German public seems scandalized by the revelations, and that the German government has begun to react.

Sending gas masks, though, isn't enough. The greater and long-term need is for more rigorous controls on the flow of weapons, including illegal exports, into the Middle East.

At least nine German companies now are being investigated for possible violations of export-control laws. But, in building up its arsenals, Iraq had help from others as well, including Americans. With his oil revenues, Saddam Hussein had the cash to pay. Because plenty of merchants were prepared to make deals, Iraq acquired some of the most advanced and lethal military technology available.

The world is paying the consequences of a mixture of private greed, lax laws, feeble enforcement and official connivance and deception - all of which helped create the situation that has led, seemingly inexorably, to the Persian Gulf War.

United Nations resolutions and the Bush administration alike have called for an international framework of stability and peace for the region following the war. Controlling weapons exports, both illegal and legal, must be an important part of that framework. It's too late to keep chemical weapons out of one ruthless dictator's hands. It's not too late to keep them out of others'.

by CNB