Chemical Weapons

Harkins restores money for Patterson Mill schools Harford County Executive James M. Harkins has reinstated money in his proposed budget for the start of construction of a middle and high school complex. About a month ago, Harkins said he would hold off on plans for the Patterson Mill school complex near Bel Air out of fear of being unable to pay the debt service on bonds to finance the proposed $52 million project. "Building Patterson Mill has been one of my top priorities," Harkins said Wednesday, a day after sending the County Council an amendment to his budget to add $12 million for the school complex.

War on terror must not ignore causes of anger Cal Thomas left us no doubt where he stands in relation to the "war on terror" and who should run it in the future ("Another blow in this world war," Opinion * Commentary, March 17). "If elected president, Sen. John Kerry would return American decision-making to the dithering and powerless United Nations," he writes. I wasn't aware that American decision-making was ever in the hands of the United Nations. And of course he also declined to examine whether the United Nations' powerlessness might be due to its lack of support from the United States.

In a formal declaration yesterday, Libya disclosed that it had produced and stored 20 tons of deadly mustard gas, according to an international disarmament body that monitors the ban on chemical weapons. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the group based in The Hague, Netherlands, charged with ridding the world of chemical weapons, said that a Libyan official had turned over to the organization more than a dozen folders containing details of the illicit chemical weapons program.

NEW YORK - The New York Police Department, working with city health officials, federal authorities and other agencies, has been preparing for a possible attack with nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, perhaps the most daunting threat facing municipalities in a post-9/11 world. Meeting in secret and conducting complex drills, the department has brought together government agencies in a broad effort for much of the past year. In doing so, it has put together a program that national security and law enforcement officials describe as unrivaled among American cities.

WASHINGTON - By unraveling Libya's program for weapons of mass destruction, U.S. spy agencies and international arms control authorities are hoping to unlock some of the mysteries in the world of illicit trade in nuclear, chemical and biological materials, senior U.S. intelligence officials said yesterday. In agreeing to give up its weapons programs, Libya told U.S. and British spy agencies that it possesses tons of mustard gas and other chemical weapons materials, facilities that could manufacture germ weapons, Scud missiles and a more advanced nuclear weapons program than previously known, the officials said.

HALABJA, Iraq - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell finished a two-day visit to Iraq yesterday by paying homage to the victims of one of Saddam Hussein's most notorious atrocities. Powell journeyed by cargo plane and helicopter to Halabja, a Kurdish town in the northeastern corner of Iraq where 5,000 people died during a chemical weapons attack that Hussein's air force launched on residents in 1988. At a memorial for victims, Powell spoke to several hundred relatives, most of them women dressed in traditional black headscarves and some of them holding up pictures of lost husbands and children.

Flaws discovered in Aberdeen Proving Ground's chemical agent destruction plant have pushed the project at least six months behind schedule and created work delays costing about $200,000 a day. Among the problems: false alarms, overheating equipment and a slow pace in cleansing containers that held the mustard agent. But military officials and the contractors hired for the project remain optimistic about the plant, which is the Army's first to destroy agent without using an incinerator.

Flaws discovered in Aberdeen Proving Ground's chemical agent destruction plant have pushed the project at least six months behind schedule and created work delays costing about $200,000 a day. Among the problems: false alarms, overheating equipment and a slow pace in cleansing containers that held the mustard agent. But military officials and the contractors hired for the project remain optimistic about the plant, which is the Army's first to destroy agent without using an incinerator.

Flaws discovered in Aberdeen Proving Ground's chemical agent destruction plant have pushed the project at least six months behind schedule and created work delays costing about $200,000 a day. Among the problems: false alarms, overheating equipment and a slow pace in cleansing containers that held the mustard agent. But military officials and the contractors hired for the project remain optimistic about the plant, which is the Army's first to destroy agent without using an incinerator.

After 10 years of research, the Army is fine-tuning and preparing to field several mobile systems designed to detect and destroy chemical materiel, from shells to soldier training kits, that turn up at bases and former defense sites around the United States. These are not items included in the military's eight chemical weapons stockpile sites. But they are just as dangerous, say officials with the program that has developed the systems, a program based at Aberdeen Proving Ground. About 200 sites in the nation are thought to be home to chemical munitions, while chemical agent training kits have been found everywhere from burial pits to dusty closet shelves.