Aust. team to view gas rocket

Press, 20 April 1982, Page 8

Aust. team to view gas rocket

NZPA-Reuter Bangkok An Australian team of military experts has arrived in Thailand to examine a rocket which Laotian resistance fighters say has a poison gas warhead with Soviet markings, according to informed diplomatic sources in Bangkok. The Australian Embassy would neither confirm nor deny reports that a rocket had been turned over to Australian officials and would not comment on the presence of military experts in Thailand. Australian officials were sceptical that the rocket, reported to have been turned over to them last week, contained poisonous mycotoxin chemicals, the sources said.

Several Western nations, particularly the United States, have sought hard evidence that Soviet-made toxic chemicals were being used ■by Vietnamese-led. forces

against resistance groups in Kampuchea and Laos. Vietnam and the Soviet Union have strenuously denied Western allegations that they are involved in chemical warfare. An American State Department report released last month alleged that at least 10,000 people had died from chemical attacks in Laos, Kampuchea and Afghanistan since 1976, including more than 6000 Laotian Hmong hilltribes people. The Hmong fought fiercely on the American side during the Vietnam war and have continued to resist the Communist Government in Laos. The report said that the conclusion that the Soviet Union had developed the chemical weapons and supplied them to Vietnam was “inescapable.” Most of the' evidence for the report has come from the testimony of refugees, and investigators have been eager to find evidence in the form of weapons.