§ Lord BachMy honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Ivor Caplin) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
I am publishing today the Ministry of Defence paper Review of Modelling of the Demolitions at Khamisiyah in March 1991 and Implications for UK Personnel. The purpose of the paper is to evaluate recent work undertaken by the US Department of Defense (DoD) which modelled the distribution of nerve agents released by US demolitions of Iraqi chemical weapons at the end of the 1990–91 Gulf conflict and to discuss its implications for UK personnel.
The MoD has assessed the 2002 DoD model carefully and welcomes the improvements incorporated. The model better estimates the size and nature of the possible area of exposure. However, MoD notes that it utilises wide parameters in order to include the maximum number of personnel who could potentially have been exposed to any level of nerve agent. While it is appropriate to include a margin of this kind, MoD believes that the limits used in the model somewhat overstate the potential risk to UK troops. None the less, MoD has used the model for its own analysis and concludes that:
- The model results in a generally smaller geographic exposure area than that described in earlier models.
- As estimated previously, approximately 9,000 UK service personnel may have been within the area of possible exposure, with the closest some 130 km from Khamisiyah.
- The level of nerve agent would have been too low to have any biologically detectable effect on UK troops and would have a minimal impact on health; again this is consistent with previous findings.