Thaindian News

London, Mar. 2 (ANI): A growing number of Western military and intelligence experts fear that Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi could use biological and chemical weapons on his own people to end the protests against his government.

According to them, while Gaddafi may have promised to give up such weapons in 2003 as part of the deal that brought the rogue state back into the diplomatic fold, the chilling fact is he still has enough to kill and maim an awful lot of people.

According to a Daily Mail report, he still has almost ten tons of chemicals needed to make mustard gas, the near-odourless gas that condemned so many to a lingering and excruciatingly painful death in World War I.

He also has 650 tons of materials required to produce a range of deadly chemical weapons. Their effects on the human body are probably known only to those who made them and who now store them at the Rabta Chemical Weapons Production Facility - the largest chemical weapons production facility in the developing world.

Libya’s former Justice Minister Mustafa Abdel-Jalil says Gaddafi still has biological weapons - anthrax perhaps; nerve agents such as sarin; possibly even genetically modified smallpox - and that he isn’t afraid to use them.

Anthrax was first used as a weapon by the Japanese army against prisoners of war in the Thirties. If Gaddafi unleashes this deadly disease on his people, the effects could be catastrophic, killing thousands.

The threat of sarin - a substance so toxic that a drop can kill an adult - is just as worrying. Known as a ‘nerve-agent’ because it over stimulates the nervous system, exhausting glands and muscles and causing respiratory failure, sarin may be within Gaddafi’s arsenal.

He also has 1,000 tons of ‘yellow cake’ uranium, the first step towards building an atomic bomb.

The nuclear threat from Libya may be small, but it would be a fool who says it had vanished entirely.

As part of the diplomatic deal in 2003, when Gaddafi handed over Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), he destroyed his long-range missiles and 3,300 aerial mortar shells designed for delivering mustard gas and chemical agents.

But, despite this being hailed at the time as ‘the real non-proliferation success story of the new millennium’ by President Bush’s assistant, American Secretary of State Paula DeSutter, the destruction and verification process has been slow, tortuous and incomplete.

Gaddafi still has an unknown number of lethal Scud-B missiles and a huge arsenal of conventional artillery that could be adapted relatively easily for use with chemical and biological agents.

Though he has unsophisticated weapons of mass destruction that wouldn’t be capable of reaching the United Kingdom in 45 minutes, but they could do terrible damage to his own people.

The man with his finger on the button, after all, is the same man who once famously claimed: “I have created Libya; I can destroy it, too.” (ANI)