Moscow: Dumped World War II chemical weapons disintegrating and releasing deadly poisons in "one of the world's most heavily-fished seas"

By Guy Chazan in Moscow

October 8, 2000

NAZI chemical weapons sunk by the Allies in the Baltic after the Second World War are beginning to disintegrate, according to a new study by Russian scientists, and are releasing a cocktail of deadly poisons into one of the world's most heavily-fished seas.

The scientists recently returned from a 10-day expedition to the Baltic where they found evidence that weapons contained on Allied ships sunk in the Skagerrak strait between Norway and Denmark and off the Danish island of Bornholm are leaking toxins into the sea.

Using a German remote-controlled deep sea submersible, the team took water and soil samples from the sea-bed which revealed worrying traces of arsenic, mustard gas and sarin, the gas used by the Aum Shinrikiyo cult in its attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995.

They said that the heavily corroded shells may be about to break up. They found organisms around the sunken ships which were immune to mustard gas - suggesting the lethal chemicals may already have entered the food chain. Russia says that pollution in the Baltic is an issue of national concern, since it buys produce from the estimated thirty countries who fish in the affected area. "If we don't act soon, there will be a mass emission of toxic agents which will affect all the Baltic Sea nations, including Russia," said Vice Admiral Tengis Borisov. "That means an environmental catastrophe and an end to fishing in the Baltic."

Other Russian scientists say that the expedition was just a stunt aimed at diverting attention from Russia's own disastrous ecological record and shifting the blame for pollution in the Baltic onto the United States and Britain.

"What about all the Soviet chemical weapons dumped in the Arctic Sea?" said Lev Fyodorov, a Russian academic who has been researching Soviet arms-dumping at sea for the last nine years. "We should deal with our own problems first."

Mr Fyodorov has written extensively on the Soviet chemical weapons industry, and says that the Soviets dumped thousands of their own shells and bombs containing mustard gas, Lewisite (a poison blister gas developed by the United States during World War I), prussic acid and phosgene in almost all the seas that wash the shores of what was the Soviet Union - including the White, Black, Kara, and Barents Seas, and the Seas of Okhotsk and Japan.

The expedition was also been dismissed by critics as an attempt to deflect public concern in the West from the Kursk nuclear submarine disaster. There are fears the Kursk's reactors could start leaking radioactive contamination into the Barents Sea.

"There is definitely a problem of chemical pollution in the Baltic - fishermen coming into contact with these weapons have been dying for years," said Alexei Yablokov, one of Russia's most prominent ecologists and a former presidential adviser. "But nuclear contamination from sunken Russian reactors and waste in the Northern Seas is just as serious."

During the war, the Allies confiscated 302,875 tonnes of German chemical weapons, containing 14 types of toxic agents. A decision was taken that each of the Allies would dispose of the weapons found in its zone of occupation by the end of 1947. Between June and December that year, the Soviets dumped their share of 35,000 tonnes, mostly artillery shells, at two sites in the Baltic.

Meanwhile, the British and Americans loaded theirs aboard old boats which were scuttled in the Skagerrak and Kattegat straits off Denmark, according to Vice Adm Borisov. He says Britain and the US still refuse to say exactly how many boats were sunk, but Russia estimates that there were between 42 and 65.

Russia says that it has already identified two places where the Allies sank ships: 27 of them were scuttled 20 miles west of the Swedish port of Lysekil, while an unspecified number were found a few miles off Arendal in Norway. Vice Adm Borisov suggested that the only practical solution to the chemical weapons problem was to create a sarcophagus sealing off the ships and their deadly cargo. He said that Russia's military-industrial complex had the necessary technology to carry out such an operation, which would cost $2-3 billion over five years.

There is a precedent for such a procedure. Vice Adm Borisov was involved in expeditions during the mid-1990s to seal off the Komsomolets, a Soviet nuclear submarine which caught fire and sank in 1989 with two nuclear-tipped torpedoes on board. Until the operation, there had been fears that plutonium in the warheads could leak into the Barents Sea.

The offer of Russian help has raised suspicions that Russia's interest in the Baltic problem is purely mercantile.

"This is just an attempt to milk money from the West," said Mr Fyodorov.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000122257519214&rtmo=Ll3hLh7d&atmo=YYYYYYbp&pg=/et/00/10/8/wbal08.html

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), October 08, 2000