HL Deb 20 March 1995 vol 562 cc56-7WA
The Countess of Mar

asked Her Majesty's Government:

Whether they have seen a copy of the chemical officer's log released by Lt Gen R I Neal, Deputy Commander of Central Command, US Department of Defense, to Mr. Paul Sullivan, President of Gulf War Veterans of Georgia, which proves that chemical weapons were used during the Gulf War, and if so what is their response.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Henley):

This is a matter for the Chief Executive of the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment. I have therefore asked him to reply.

Letter to the Countess of Mar from the Director General of the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment, Dr. Graham Pearson, dated 20 March 1995

1. Your Parliamentary Question to Her Majesty's Government of 7 March 1995 asking whether they have seen a copy of the chemical officer's log released by Lt Gen R I Neal, Deputy Commander of Central Command, US Department of Defence, to Mr Paul Sullivan, President of Gulf War Veterans of Georgia, which proves that chemical weapons were used during the Gulf War, and if so what is their response, has been passed to me to answer as Chief Executive of the Chemical Biological Defence Establishment.

2. The role of the Chemical and Biological Defence Establishment is to carry out work to ensure that the UK Armed Forces are provided with effective protective measures against the threat that chemical and biological weapons may be used against them.

3. The United States Department of Defence Desert Storm Nuclear Biological and Chemical log which was released by Lt Gen R I Neal to Mr. Paul Sullivan was drawn upon by the US Department of Defence in preparing material used to brief the US Defence Science Board Task Force on Persian Gulf War Health Effects. An abbreviated selection of chemical/biological incidents extracted from these logs is contained in Appendix B, pages 1– 6 of the report of the Defence Science Board issued in June 1994.

4. As Director General and Chief Executive of CBDE Potion Down, I was invited to attend and participated as a specialist adviser to the Defence Science Board Task Force on Persian Gulf War Health Effects and was therefore present at the briefings to the Defence Science Board by the Department of Defence on the incidents reported in the US Department of Defence NBC log from the Gulf conflict and summarised in Appendix B to the Defence Science Board Task Force. The Defence Science Board Task Force concluded that they had found no evidence that either chemical or biological warfare was deployed at any level against the coalition forces or that there were any exposures of US Service members to chemical or biological warfare agents in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia. The Task Force noted that they were aware of one soldier who was blistered, plausibly from mustard gas, after entering a bunker in Iraq during the post-war period. The report noted that the one plausible injury occurred during inspection and demolition of Iraqi bunkers and stated that "It seemed to be the result of accidental contact of the soldier with contaminated soil in a bunker that may have been used previously, (probably during the Iran-Iraq war) for storing mustard".

5. The United Kingdom and the United States utilised a wide range of detectors so as to provide warning to our forces prior to exposure to a harmful concentration of agent. Such detectors are sensitive and there are carefully laid down procedures in the event of any single detector alarming for checks to be carried out so as to determine whether an alarm was indeed caused by a chemical or biological weapon attack. The incidents cited from the US Department of Defence Desert Storm NBC log from the Gulf conflict did not result in any confirmation that chemical or biological warfare agents had been used by Iraq against the coalition forces. Our conclusion is that there is no evidence that chemical or biological warfare agents were used during the Gulf conflict.