Moscow rejects chemical war claim

Press, 18 February 1983, Page 8

Moscow rejects chemical war claim

NZPA New York The Soviet I nion yesterday rejected as unscientific an American report in November that SovietAfghan forces had been using chemical weapons in Afghanistan. The 12-page analysis written by "experts from competent Soviet organisations" was accompanied by a letter from the Soviet United ■ Nations Ambassador, Mr Oleg Troyanovsky, which said that the American report had contained "lying accusations." The Soviet experts said that the American report contained no factual material and was a mixture of slanderous conjectures and distorted facts. "It is not difficult to produce fictitious samples of blood, urine, various tissues and vegetation, or to invent the names of victims, witnesses. journalists, doctors and even scientists, and forge clinical histories. “The authors of the report have been unable to name a single type of delivery aircraft and provide its number, or to provide the number of a single military unit, and have been unable to submit a single piece of ammunition or even a fragment of ammunition as evidence,” the Soviet analysis said. “It is a scientifically known fact that outbreaks of mycotoxicoses in Thailand are very frequent and are due to the presence in that region of a large number of tricothecene mycotoxins. “Everything falls into place if the data quoted in the report are compared with the well known indicators of the annual incidence of disease and death from natural mycotoxins in those regions.” it said. Meanwhile, according to interviews with American Television Soviet soldiers being held by Afghan rebels say that Russian troops are “killing everything that is alive in Afghanistan." The interviews, on A.B.C’s “20/20” programme, also contain assertions by Soviet soldiers that chemical warfare is being used by their compatriots, although they offered no direct eye-witness evidence. An A.B.C. team went into Afghanistan for two days earlier this month to interview’ six Soviet defectors held as prisoners-of-war in a rebel camp. One of them. Private Sergei Meshcherlyakov, aged 26, said that he had defected “because I do not want to kill women and children, because the Soviet troops are killing everything that is alive in Afghanistan.” Asked how widespread the killing was, he said: “I do not know. They kill everything without count, with any kind of weapon.” Another Private, Valery Kissilev, aged 20, said that he believed chemical warfare was being used by the Soviet forces. “There are chemical units, that is, they are using the weapons here. The Army has chemical units everywhere. The infantry has them, the paratroops. Even the Air Force has its specialists in that field.” he said. He had seen large holes which he believed had been caused by chemical weapons which had coloured the soil red, but he added: “I am not a chemist.” Sergeant Alexander Zhurskovs, aged 21, said that troop morale was low — “Nobody wants to fight. All soldiers want to go home.” But many soldiers had opted for Afghanistan because a year there counted as two in the service. The prisoners said that Soviet soldiers traded their personal belongings, sometimes even ammunition, for hashish.