THE ROLLBACK OF LIBYA'S CHEMICAL WEAPONS PROGRAM

Abstract

In 2003, Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi agreed to eliminate his country's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs and long-range Scud missiles under strict verification by U.S. and British experts and international inspectors. This article examines the negotiation and implementation of Libya's WMD rollback, with a primary focus on its chemical weapons program, and draws some lessons for the future. Although the Libyan case was unique in many ways, some aspects have relevance for other countries, including the critical role played by multilateral nonproliferation organizations, the utility of economic sanctions and export controls, the importance of a flexible U.S. disarmament funding mechanism, the value of rotating technical assistance teams in and out of the country that is disarming, and the desirability of remaining politically engaged with a former proliferator after rollback is complete.

Keywords:

• Libya
• chemical weapons
• United States
• United Kingdom
• disarmament

In 2003 Libya agreed to renounce its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs and long-range ballistic missiles and to allow U.S., British, and international inspectors to verify these disarmament commitments. According to a former U.S. government official, the Libyan rollback was “one of the rare times that a state has volunteered to rid itself of its WMD programs, and it is a first for a state sponsor of terror to do so without regime change.”1 Libya's chemical weapons (CW) capability was the most advanced of its WMD programs and the only one for which a stockpile actually existed. The nuclear weapons program was embryonic but of serious concern because of its ties to the nuclear trafficking network headed by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, while the biological weapons program was little more than a plan that had made minimal progress.2

Several articles have analyzed Libya's motivations for eliminating its nuclear and chemical capabilities in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions and the restoration of diplomatic ties with the United States.3 Yet apart from a few speeches and memoirs by former government officials, little has been written about the operational details of the rollback process. This article discusses the technical and bureaucratic challenges involved in Libya's chemical weapons disarmament and concludes with some lessons for the future.

The Libyan Decision

Libya's involvement in a string of terrorist incidents, including the December 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people, led the United Nations to impose stringent economic sanctions on Tripoli in 1989.4 These sanctions led to the diplomatic isolation of Libya's mercurial leader, Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, and crippled the country's oil industry, the lifeblood of its economy. Libya was also one of the relatively few countries that refused to join the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), a multilateral treaty banning the development, production, stockpiling, transfer, and use of chemical weapons that entered into force in 1997. Although the CWC's international secretariat, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague, reached out to the Libyan government through diplomatic channels, these overtures did not prove fruitful.

After George W. Bush assumed the U.S. presidency in January 2001, Colonel Qaddafi felt increasingly threatened by the United States, particularly when the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks led the Bush administration to declare a “Global War on Terror.” Although Libya was not an official member of the Bush administration's “axis of evil,” John R. Bolton, then undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, gave a speech in May 2002 in which he called Libya a “rogue state” that was actively pursuing nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.5 Tripoli angrily denied the allegation.6

By this time, however, Colonel Qaddafi's attitude toward his WMD programs had begun to soften because of his plan to reorient Libyan foreign policy away from the Middle East and toward Africa, where he saw better chances for regional leadership and where the political importance of WMD is less prominent. Qaddafi also sought to shed his pariah status by moving to settle foreign claims over the Lockerbie incident, and he began to send out diplomatic feelers to that effect.

In late 2002, as tensions rose between the Bush administration and the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, Qaddafi became increasingly concerned about his own security. In March 2003, shortly before the start of the U.S.–led invasion of Iraq, the Libyan leader's 31-year-old son Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, a student at the London School of Economics and Political Science, contacted officials at the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI-6) and said that his father wanted to “clear the air” about Libya's WMD programs in exchange for assurances that the United States would not seek to topple the regime.7 Although Saif claimed that “everything would be on the table,” U.S. officials were skeptical.8 Nevertheless, during a meeting at Camp David later that month, British Prime Minister Tony Blair persuaded President Bush to explore the Libyan opening.

Initial discussions with Libya involved a small group of senior British and U.S. intelligence officials. To prevent leaks to the press that might deter Qaddafi from moving forward, the Libyan channel was handled as a matter of extreme secrecy. Robert G. Joseph, the senior director for proliferation strategy, counterproliferation, and homeland defense on the National Security Council (NSC) staff, ran the operation out of the White House with the assistance of Stephen R. Kappes, the associate deputy director for operations at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Policy guidance came directly from the president, and knowledge of the initiative was limited to the most senior level of the State and Defense Departments. Even then, the shared information was general in nature and did not include operational details.9 The primary point of contact in the Libyan government was Musa Kusa, the head of Libya's foreign intelligence service, the external Security Organization. Although he had studied at the University of Michigan and spoke flawless English, Kusa was a controversial figure. The CIA suspected him of having helped plan several terrorist attacks, including the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.10

Between March and September 2003, U.S., British, and Libyan intelligence officials held a series of secret meetings in London, Geneva, and Tripoli.11 Meanwhile, Libya accepted responsibility for the Pan Am bombing and agreed to pay $2.7 billion in compensation ($10 million for each of the 270 victims). In September, CIA and MI-6 representatives met with Qaddafi in Tripoli to discuss the prospect of a visit by U.S. and British technical intelligence experts to assess the scope of Libya's WMD programs. Although the Libyan leader agreed in principle to the visit and told his senior aides to work out the details, follow-on talks made little progress. With the U.S. military occupation of Iraq encountering significant resistance, Qaddafi appeared to be losing interest in giving up his WMD programs.12

A turning point came on October 3, when the United States, Britain, Germany, and Italy arranged the diversion at sea of a German-owned container ship, the BBC China, en route from Dubai to Libya. The ship was escorted to the Italian port of Taranto, where five 40-foot shipping containers labeled “used machine parts” were offloaded and inspected. The containers were found to hold thousands of parts for advanced P-2 gas centrifuges used to enrich uranium to weapons grade. The machines had been manufactured in Malaysia by the nuclear trafficking network run by A.Q. Khan. On October 7, U.S. intelligence officials handed their Libyan counterparts photographs of centrifuge components from the BBC China, along with a compact-disc recording of an intercepted telephone call between A.Q. Khan and Ma'atouq Mohamed Ma'atouq, the head of Libya's clandestine nuclear weapons program.13 This intelligence coup stunned the Libyan leadership and made clear that the nuclear program had been exposed, along with the illicit supply network on which it depended. Apparently concerned that the program was now vulnerable to further disruption and increased costs, and might even be the target of a U.S. military attack, Qaddafi approved the pending visit to Libya by CIA and MI-6 officials.14

A fifteen-person technical intelligence team, headed by Kappes, spent ten days in Libya from October 19 to 29, 2003, and conducted a preliminary survey of the country's nuclear, chemical, and missile programs based on interviews with Libyan weapons scientists and visits to about a dozen facilities. The main purpose of the visit was to assess whether or not the Libyans were prepared to disclose all aspects of their WMD programs, consistent with U.S. and British intelligence estimates. CIA and MI-6 experts who interviewed Libyan scientists were impressed by their openness. During a second intelligence team visit from December 1 through 12, 2003, the Libyans granted the U.S. and British experts even greater access to clandestine weapons sites, laboratories, and dual-use plants, including facilities that the CIA had not known existed, and allowed them to take samples, photographs, and other evidence. Libyan officials also surprised the team members by showing them nuclear weapon designs provided by the A.Q. Khan network.15

With respect to chemical weapons, the intelligence team learned that the Libyan CW program had been led by a PhD chemical engineer named Ahmed Hesnaw and had involved fewer than a dozen chemists and chemical engineers, some with advanced degrees from U.S. and British universities. Instead of trying to build its own domestic CW infrastructure, Libya had drawn on its substantial oil revenues to purchase precursor chemicals and specialized production equipment from abroad, often at inflated prices. The Libyans acknowledged having produced fewer than 25 metric tons (MT) of sulfur mustard (a World War I–era agent that causes severe burns and blisters on the skin and can be fatal if more than 50 percent of the skin is exposed or if it is inhaled), as well as empty chemical bomb casings and small amounts of the nerve agents sarin and soman.16 The size of the Libyan CW stockpile turned out to be far smaller than the 100 MT that the U.S. intelligence community had estimated.17 Although the CW research program was still active, the production line had been shut down for more than a decade.

Several questions remained unanswered after the intelligence team's visits, including a lack of clarity over the extent of Libya's work on nerve agents. Even so, the U.S. and British governments had gained sufficient confidence in Qaddafi's intentions to proceed with policy-level discussions. Robert Joseph believed that the best way to address the unresolved issues was for the United States to gain greater access to Libyan WMD facilities and personnel by deepening its engagement with the regime.18

Negotiating the Libyan Agreement

On December 16, 2003, senior U.S., British, and Libyan policy makers met in London to discuss Libya's renunciation of its WMD programs. To preclude leaks to the news media, the U.S. delegation, headed by Joseph and Kappes, flew secretly to London on a CIA aircraft without informing either the British Embassy in Washington or the U.S. Embassy in London. As a discreet venue for the meeting, the British government chose a back room at the Travellers Club, a venerable private institution on Pall Mall.19 The British participants were William Ehrman, the director-general for defense and intelligence at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO); David Landsman, the head of counterproliferation at the FCO; and two senior officials from MI-6. The Libyan delegation consisted of Abdulati al-Obeidi, the ambassador to Rome and national security adviser to Qaddafi; Mohammed Azwai, the ambassador to Britain; and Musa Kusa.20 (The same three Libyans had negotiated the Lockerbie agreement with the United States and Britain.)21 Although al-Obeidi was the nominal head of the Libyan delegation, he deferred to Kusa on most issues.

Over six hours of tense negotiations, the two sides discussed the text of the statement that Qaddafi would make. Joseph refused to bargain with the Libyans over the terms of the WMD rollback; he believed that haggliing would slow down the process and preclude a clear, unambiguous outcome.22 Although he insisted that Libya make a strategic decision to eliminate its WMD programs without a specific quid pro quo, he provided assurances that good-faith implementation would remove a major obstacle to the lifting of sanctions, the restoration of diplomatic relations with the United States, and Tripoli's reintegration into the international community. The Libyans disliked this approach, but their bargaining position was weak. As Joseph later observed, the “stars were aligned” in the U.S. and British negotiators’ favor. 23 Not only had Libya's ties to the A.Q. Khan network been exposed, but on December 13, three days before the London talks began, U.S. troops in Iraq had found Saddam Hussein hiding in a “spider hole” near Tikrit and had taken him into custody.

Qaddafi was in a dilemma of his own making, concerned about appearing weak by caving in to Western pressure, yet fearing attack by the United States if he admitted possessing WMD.24 On December 18, Blair placed a call to Tripoli and held a thirty-minute telephone conversation with Qaddafi in an effort to reassure him. Blair promised the Libyan leader that if he made a clear statement renouncing his WMD programs, the response from London and Washington would be extremely positive.25 After a lengthy back-and-forth over the wording of the text, Qaddafi finally signed off on a statement to the effect that Libya had conducted secret talks with the United States and Britain about its WMD programs and had agreed “of its own free will” to eliminate them in a verifiable manner. On December 19, Qaddafi released the statement in written form, in an attempt to save face. Immediately afterward, Blair and Bush made separate but coordinated announcements welcoming the Libyan move.26

Implementing the Agreement

On January 5, 2004, the group of senior U.S., British, and Libyan officials launched a second round of trilateral talks at the FCO in London, focusing on implementation of the Libyan statement. Robert Joseph had prepared a Common Understandings Paper with a checklist of items that the Libyan government was to relinquish, including all aspects of uranium enrichment, the entire chemical weapons program, and the full arsenal of Scud B and C missiles.27 The mood of the meeting was dramatically different from the tense atmosphere that had prevailed during the negotiations over Qaddafi's statement. All three sides emphasized cooperation, partnership, and completing Libya's disarmament as expeditiously as possible.28

Nevertheless, the U.S. and British governments, concerned that the Libyan leader might have second thoughts about his decision, launched a rapid series of actions. Joseph gave the U.S. State Department the lead for developing operational plans for the Libyan rollback, supported by the Departments of Defense and Energy and the CIA's Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control Center. At State, Paula DeSutter, the assistant secretary who headed the Bureau of Verification, Compliance, and Implementation (VCI), established expert working groups for each of the WMD disciplines (nuclear, chemical, biological, and ballistic missiles), along with a coordinating committee to align the working groups in Washington with the technical assistance teams that would implement the agreement on the ground in Libya.29

By early January 2004, VCI had drafted a set of detailed action plans for how Libya could meet its disarmament commitments in a verifiable manner, with lists of actions to be taken and tentative timelines. These documents were closely coordinated with the British government.30 Meanwhile, Robert Joseph appointed State Department official Donald A. Mahley as the senior WMD representative in Libya, responsible for managing the work of the technical assistance teams and liaising with the Libyan authorities. Joseph had known Mahley for twenty years and was confident that he could get the job done.31 On January 6, 2004, less than three weeks after Qaddafi's December 19 statement, Libya deposited its instrument of accession to the CWC with the United Nations in New York. Thirty days later, on February 5, 2004, Libya officially became a state party to the CWC and was required to submit a complete initial declaration of its CW program within thirty days.

U.S.–British Technical Assistance Teams

The intensive part of the Libyan rollback effort lasted from January through September 2004 and consisted of three phases that were implemented by U.S.–British technical assistance teams. Each phase involved site visits, interviews with Libyan officials, and the review of thousands of pages of documents in an effort to understand the country's WMD programs and dismantle them in a verifiable manner. Phase I entailed promptly removing from Libya by plane and ship materials and equipment that posed urgent proliferation risks, identifying the scope of the WMD programs, and assisting the Libyans with treaty- and safeguards-related interactions with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the OPCW. Phase II focused on removing or eliminating the remaining materials and equipment from Libya's nuclear and missile programs, consolidating its CW agent stockpile, and destroying more than 3,500 empty chemical munitions. Phase III involved intensive verification to better understand the extent of the WMD and missile programs and the procurement networks supporting them, in order to confirm that Libya had truly eliminated these capabilities. The successful completion of each phase was followed by concrete steps to reward Libya by gradually lifting sanctions and upgrading the diplomatic relationship.32

On January 18, 2004, the first U.S.–British technical assistance team arrived in Tripoli for a ten-day visit. This team consisted mainly of nuclear and missile experts because Washington had told Mahley that his top priorities were to conduct a survey of the Libyan research reactor (which used highly enriched uranium fuel) and assess the status of the long-range Scud C missiles. State Department officials took possession of sensitive documents containing nuclear weapon designs, which were flown out of Libya on January 22 aboard a chartered aircraft.33 Also removed on a priority basis were stocks of uranium hexafluoride, gas centrifuges and other equipment, and Scud missile guidance systems. The second U.S.–British technical assistance team, which arrived in Libya on February 14, 2004, included sub-teams for all four WMD disciplines, including chemical weapons.

Because the economic sanctions against Libya were still in place and U.S. diplomatic relations had not yet been restored, implementing the rollback effort required Mahley to overcome a daunting series of bureaucratic hurdles. He persuaded the State Department's Consular Section to issue the U.S. team members passports authorizing them to travel to Libya and also obtained a letter from the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control allowing the team to spend U.S. dollars in-country. Key aspects of the rollback operation, including the removal from Libya of uranium-enrichment equipment, uranium feedstock, and Scud missile guidance systems, were financed by the State Department's Nonproliferation and Disarmament Fund (NDF), an emergency funding mechanism with “notwithstanding authority,” making it possible to waive the UN sanctions and other restrictions under U.S. law. If standard government contracting procedures had been used, it would have taken several months to release the funds, by which time Qaddafi might have changed his mind.

Initially, the Libyan government was uncomfortable with the prospect of dozens of American and British experts roaming the country, both because of concerns about their personal security and the possibility of spying, and thus placed several constraints on the size of the technical assistance teams and their freedom of movement. First, the Libyans limited each team to a total of fifteen experts (ten American and five British), including Don Mahley and his deputy Ken Ward. Second, the team members were not allowed to stay at a regular hotel in Tripoli but were housed at a sprawling Muslim conversion center on the outskirts of the city, halfway between the airport and downtown. The conversion center included dormitory-style sleeping quarters, luxury villas, and a mosque from which the “call to prayer” emanated at regular intervals. To provide food, laundry, and housekeeping services for the visiting team members, the Libyan government commandeered the kitchen staff from a local restaurant and the service staff from a hotel and brought them to the conversion center to work. Finally, the U.S.–British team did not have access to their own vehicles and were driven everywhere by their Libyan handlers in government-owned BMWs.34 By the spring of 2004, the Libyans had become more comfortable with the U.S. and British experts and less concerned about their personal security. Accordingly, the housing restrictions were eased and the team members were allowed to stay at the Corinthia Hotel in downtown Tripoli.

Greatly facilitating the work of the technical assistance teams was the fact that Qaddafi's December 19 statement was communicated throughout the Libyan government bureaucracy and empowered working-level officials to cooperate fully with the disarmament process. U.S. and British experts found the Libyans to be forthcoming with information and responsive to all requests, including visits to undeclared sites where illicit activities were suspected. This experience was in marked contrast to that of the UN weapons inspectors in Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein had played a game of cat-and-mouse and sought to preserve a degree of ambiguity about whether he still retained WMD in order to deter Iran.35

Early on, the U.S. and British governments decided that the technical assistance team members would not maintain a permanent presence in Libya but would work in-country for two or three weeks, conducting interviews, inspecting facilities, and collecting documents, and then return to their respective capitals to digest the information. Although the idea of rotating the teams in and out of Libya was not intuitively obvious, it turned out to be highly effective. Typically the same experts working in-country were also responsible for analyzing the data back home, and a large number of documents had to be translated from Arabic into English. As a result, it took three or four weeks to process the information from each visit and plan the next round of inspections. Over the intensive period of Libyan disarmament, from January through September 2004, U.S.–British technical assistance teams made five in-country visits, separated by periods of analysis and planning.36

On the ground in Libya, Mahley set up a two-tiered structure for consultations with the Libyan authorities. Each sub-team established a trilateral committee made up of U.S. and British experts and Libyan scientists and facility managers to discuss planned site visits and requests for documents and interviews. In a number of cases, working-level Libyan officials were afraid to make decisions that might get them in trouble, such as granting access to sensitive documents or undeclared facilities, but they had no way to ask permission from higher authorities. To solve this problem, Mahley created a senior-level committee consisting of himself, his deputy Ward, the British ambassador, and a small circle of top Libyan officials who had personal ties to Qaddafi and effectively ran the country on his behalf. Whenever a question arose that could not be resolved at the working level, Mahley convened the group of senior Libyans to address it.37 In addition, a high-level trilateral commission, chaired by Undersecretary of State Bolton, met periodically in London to address broader policy issues related to implementation of the Libyan rollback.38

Even before Libya became a party to the CWC, the OPCW also began to play an active role in the disarmament effort. In early February 2004, verification and legal experts from the OPCW Technical Secretariat held an initial round of technical discussions with Libyan officials from the relevant government agencies, and Libya established a National Committee to coordinate the implementation of its obligations under the CWC.39 To help with the preparation of the initial declaration, U.S. and British experts conducted joint working sessions with Libyan officials to establish the facts of the CW program, the content of what had to be declared, and the nature of the practical implementation measures that would follow.40 On February 20, 2004, Libya submitted a preliminary CWC declaration to the OPCW, and its full declaration followed on March 5. An international team of OPCW inspectors arrived in Libya at the end of February and completed their initial inspection on March 19, having inventoried the declared chemical weapons and related equipment.

On September 20, 2004, when the last U.S.–British technical assistance team left Tripoli, the intense phase of disarmament and verification came to an end. By now the various elements of the nuclear program had either been removed or were being monitored by the IAEA, and Libya had begun to implement the CWC under OPCW supervision. Even so, some important work remained to be accomplished. Libya had consolidated its stocks of mustard agent and precursors and was preparing to destroy them with U.S. assistance, and it had begun the process of seeking approval from the OPCW to convert its former CW production facility at Rabta to peaceful purposes. At this ti me, Britain, Libya, and the United States formally established a Trilateral Steering and Cooperation Committee, made up of high-level officials from each country, to discuss any additional issues that might arise and to facilitate Libya's further implementation of its commitments. In practice, this committee had already been operating for several months under the chairmanship of Undersecretary of State Bolton.41

After September 2004, the rollback process transitioned to an ad hoc effort in which the various U.S.–British sub-teams scheduled occasional visits to Libya to address specific issues, such as CW destruction. A few weeks before each visit, the State Department sent the Libyans a message—coordinated in advance with the British government—proposing the dates of the visit, the list of participating U.S. and British experts (typically four or five), the issues to be discussed, and the officials with whom they wished to meet. Because the United States did not yet have diplomatic relations with Libya, this request was sent in the form of a “non-paper” (off-the-record communication) to the British Embassy in Tripoli, which then passed it to the Libyan officials involved in the rollback effort. Once the proposed visit had been approved, the Libyan government issued visas to the U.S. and British team members.42

Elements of the Libyan CW Program

The following sections discuss the various elements of the Libyan CW program and the specific issues involved in their elimination.

Chemical Weapons Production Facilities

In 1984, the Libyan government hired companies from about a dozen countries, led by Ihsan Barbouti International in Britain and Imhausen-Chemie in West Germany, to build the Rabta Pharmaceutical Factory, a large industrial complex situated in a remote expanse of desert about 65 kilometers (km) southwest of Tripoli. An area of the site called Rabta 2, located on the left side of the main road and concealed behind a large berm made of sandbags, included a rectangular chemical plant called Building 17, surrounded by utility buildings (see Photo 1). Roughly two-thirds of this plant (designated Building 17A) was occupied by a large hall of chemical reactors that manufactured commercial drugs. The remaining third of the plant (Building 17B), which was separated from the main production hall by a cinderblock and plaster wall, contained specialized equipment for the production of sulfur mustard, an oily, amber-colored liquid. The CW production line had a dedicated control room that was state-of-the-art in the mid-1980s, including process controls that were modular and highly automated.43

Photo 1.  This commercial satellite image, taken on January 23, 2002, shows the former Libyan CW production facility at Rabta. The rectangular building in the center of the industrial complex is Building 17, a dual-use pharmaceutical plant that contained the mustard agent production line. (Satellite image by GeoEye.)

During the period from 1989 through 1990 when Libya was manufacturing mustard agent, it initially imported large quantities of thiodiglycol (TDG), the immediate precursor of mustard, from foreign suppliers. Once the UN economic sanctions began to bite, however, Tripoli could no longer purchase TDG in the quantities it required. When the available supply ran out, the Libyans began to manufacture their own TDG in the dual-use part of the plant (Building 17A) by reacting two simpler chemicals: 2-chloroethanol and sodium sulfide. The output pipe from the reactor passed through the outer wall of the commercial production area and reentered the building in the sealed-off CW production area, where it fed TDG into the mustard agent manufacturing line.44 There the precursor was reacted with a chlorinating agent (such as phosphorus trichloride or thionyl chloride) to yield the final product. In this way, Libya's CW manufacturing capacity was hidden inside an ostensibly legitimate commercial facility.

The Libyans also planned to install an automatic filling line near Building 17B to load the mustard agent into plastic storage containers, but the UN trade sanctions prevented them from purchasing a suitable piece of equipment. Although the Libyan CW program managed to import four different filling machines from foreign suppliers, including companies in Germany and Italy, the equipment was shoddily built and leaked badly when tested with water. As a result, the Libyans ended up filling the plastic containers by hand.45

In 1989 the United States accused Libya of manufacturing chemical weapons at Rabta and threatened to launch air strikes against the facility. Libya responded in March 1990 by staging a deception campaign in which workers painted scorch marks on undamaged buildings and burned piles of tires to create the impression of a major fire.46 In late 1990, however, Libya shut down the CW production facility at Rabta and dismantled the specialized CW production equipment.47 When U.S. and British experts visited Rabta in February 2004, they found that the specialized equipment was being stored in an open-air boneyard at another part of the site. Many of the items were made of a high-nickel steel called Hastelloy, which is corrosion-resistant and suitable for producing nerve agents as well as mustard.48 Overall, the Libyan plant was considerably more sophisticated than CW production facilities that Mahley had seen in the Soviet Union and Iraq. The size and quality of the production equipment at Rabta, and the sophisticated way it had been configured, suggested to him that the Libyans had intended to manufacture a much larger inventory of chemical weapons, comprising both mustard and nerve agents.49

The commercial and CW portions of Building 17 had separate entrances, and Libyan officials claimed that the workers on the commercial side of the plant had been unaware of the secret activities going on next door. Because the mustard agent production line had operated for more than a year, however, the notion that the regular plant workers had not known of its existence strained credulity. Given the atmosphere of fear prevailing in Libya, it seemed more likely that the workers had been aware of the illicit production but had deliberately averted their eyes.50 Although the Libyan CW scientists admitted testing the mustard agent for potency and conducting field trials of chemical bombs filled with nonlethal stimulants, they denied any outdoor tests of live CW agents. Mahley found this statement credible, although he suspected that the Libyans had conducted laboratory experiments in “something larger than a glove box.”51

In 1992, two years after Rabta was shut down, the CIA alleged that Libya had begun work on a second CW plant at the Sebha Oasis, 650 km south of Tripoli, but this site was later reported to be dormant.52 In 1994, Libya began building yet another CW production facility at Tarhunah, 65 km southeast of Tripoli. It consisted of two giant underground tunnels dug into the side of a mountain, lined with a thick layer of reinforced concrete to make the interior invulnerable to conventional military attack. Before the Libyans could complete the Tarhunah facility, however, the U.S. government launched a public diplomacy campaign designed to pressure Qaddafi to halt construction.53 In March 1996, CIA Director John M. Deutch testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that Tarhunah was “the world's largest underground chemical weapons plant” and was due to start production within a few years.54 Qaddafi denied the allegation and claimed that the tunnels at Tarhunah were part of the Great Man-Made River Project, a giant irrigation system that would transport water from underground acquifers in southern Libya to populated areas in the north. Nevertheless, months of Western pressure and threats of U.S. military action—including an explicit warning by a senior Pentagon official in April 1996 that a nuclear bunker buster might be used to destroy Tarhunah if necessary—persuaded Qaddafi to terminate the project in late 1996. The specialized CW production equipment that Libya had procured for the underground plant remained in storage in the original shipping crates at a warehouse outside Tripoli.55

Stockpiles of Mustard Agent and Precursors

The Libyan CW stockpile consisted of 24.576 MT of sulfur mustard, which was stored in concrete bunkers at two military bases within a 20-minute drive of downtown Tripoli. When British experts wearing full chemical protective suits inspected the bunkers in early 2004, they found that the mustard had been filled into a large number of plastic jugs, each holding 5 liters or 20 liters of agent. In wartime, the jugs would have been transported to air bases and their contents transferred to 1-liter plastic canisters for loading into aerial bombs. Many of the filled jugs were deteriorating and off-gassing mustard agent, creating a severe respiratory hazard. Even outside the storage bunkers there was a strong scent of garlic, the characteristic odor of mustard agent.56 Because the bunkers were secured with little more than padlocks, Mahley was concerned about the risk of theft by terrorists or criminals. He therefore urged the Libyans to consolidate the CW stockpile at a single location to improve security and facilitate monitoring by OPCW inspectors. Accordingly, the plastic jugs filled with mustard agent were transported in open-bed trucks to the Waddan Munitions Storage Area in Al Jufrah Province, 460 km southeast of Tripoli, where they were stored in a Class A bunker protected by armed security guards.57

Scattered over a field at one of the Libyan military bases were several 200-gallon steel storage tanks containing precursors for the production of mustard and nerve agents. The Libyans had imported more than 1,400 MT of these chemicals from companies in Western Europe and the Far East, including phosphorus trichloride, dichloroethane, thionyl chloride, thiodiglycol, ethylene oxide, dimethylamine, sodium sulfide, sodium fluoride, and pinacolyl alcohol.58 Because significant amounts of the precursors had been consumed or had leaked from the containers, only 850 MT remained to be destroyed.

Libya also declared about 2,000 MT of other dual-use chemicals, such as 2-chloroethanol (a mustard precursor) and isopropyl alcohol (a sarin precursor), that are not listed in the CWC's Schedules of Chemicals and hence do not have to be declared when produced or acquired for peaceful purposes. Nevertheless, according to the “general purpose criterion” in Article II of the CWC, toxic chemicals and precursors produced or acquired for offensive CW purposes, regardless of whether or not they are listed on the CWC Schedules, meet the treaty definition of a chemical weapon and must be declared and destroyed in a verifiable manner. Libya probably could have gotten away with not declaring its “unscheduled” precursors because it would have been hard for the OPCW to prove that they had been imported for the production of chemical weapons. Under the circumstances, however, the Libyans chose to “over-declare” these chemicals rather than risk being accused of “under-declaring.” The United States and Britain praised Libya for its proactive approach to demonstrating compliance with the CWC.

Aerial Bombs for Delivery of Mustard

The sole delivery system that Libya devised for its stockpile of mustard agent was a 254-kilogram aerial bomb that was designed to be carried on the external wing racks of a fighter-bomber. Each bomb had an explosive burster tube running down its central axis, surrounded by a hexagonal array of six cylinders. The cylinders were sized so that eight 1-liter plastic canisters filled with mustard agent could fit snugly inside. Thus, a single bomb held a total of 48 liters of mustard. When the bomb hit the ground, an impact fuse in the nose would cause the central burster tube to explode, dispersing the mustard agent as a cloud of droplets and vapor. In peacetime, however, Libya stored the empty bomb casings separately from the stockpile of mustard agent, intending to fill the weapons prior to use.

In February 2004, the Libyans took CW sub-team leader Sylvester “Tony” Ryan to a small desert ranch outside Tripoli called the “turkey farm,” a site previously unknown to Western intelligence, where more than 2,800 unfilled chemical bombs were stored.59 Later, the Libyans disclosed an additional cache of 742 empty bomb casings in a garage owned by Ma'atouq Mohamed Ma'atouq, the technical czar of Libya's WMD programs. When Mahley asked the Libyan officials why they had declared only 1,500 chemical bombs to the CIA/MI-6 technical intelligence team in October 2003, the Libyans explained that they had not yet believed that Qaddafi would go through with the disarmament plan. Now, however, they insisted that they had declared all of the empty chemical bombs, a total of 3,563.60

Research and Development of Nerve Agents

A key unanswered question about the Libyan CW program concerned the production of nerve agents. After the Libyans acquired a stockpile of sulfur mustard, they realized that the aerial bombs were too crude a delivery system to make that agent an effective adjunct to their conventional military forces. To obtain a CW capability that provided real military utility, Libya would need to produce a large stockpile of nerve agents, which are far more lethal and effective than mustard. Intending to manufacture the nerve agents sarin and soman, the Libyan CW program imported corrosion-resistant equipment for the planned production facility at Tarhunah, along with industrial quantities of the sarin precursor isopropyl alcohol and a few hundred gallons of the soman precursor pinacolyl alcohol.61

Nevertheless, large-scale production of nerve agents proved to be a bridge too far for the Libyan CW program. Although the chemists were able to synthesize small quantities of sarin and soman in the laboratory, the chemical engineers encountered serious technical difficulties when attempting to scale up production. Another factor contributing to the failure of the program was the international trade embargo, which prevented the Libyans from importing nerve agent precursors in sufficient quantities. Once it became clear that the large-scale production of nerve agents was beyond Libya's technological reach, Qaddafi apparently decided to limit the CW program to R&D, while focusing resources on the clandestine nuclear weapons program.62

Destroying the Libyan CW Stockpile

After becoming a party to the CWC in February 2004, Libya was legally obligated to destroy its declared stockpiles of CW agent, precursors, and chemical munitions. Because the aerial bombs had never been filled with mustard agent, eliminating them was a fairly straightforward process. In mid-February 2004, Libyan workers began spreading out the empty bomb casings on the desert floor and using bulldozers to crush them into scrap metal (see Photo 2). A U.S.–British team videotaped this process, certified the videotape, and submitted it to the OPCW Technical Secretariat as evidence of destruction.63 At the urgent request of the OPCW, however, Libya agreed to suspend all further destruction activity until an international inspection team had arrived from The Hague. This team continuously monitored the crushing of the remaining bomb casings from February 27 until March 3.64

Photo 2.  Thousands of destroyed CW bomb casings litter the Libyan desert after they were crushed by bulldozers in February 2004. (Photo courtesy of Ken Ward, U.S. State Department.)

From March 23 to 26, 2004, Libyan representatives traveled to The Hague and presented a plan for destruction of the CW stockpile to the OPCW Executive Council.65 Initially, the Libyans expected to have no problem eliminating the mustard agent according to the timetable in the CWC. Because this process would require access to large amounts of water, the Libyans proposed building the CW destruction facility at Rabta, a step that would require transporting the leaking containers of mustard agent from the storage bunkers at Waddan. In addition, the various declared precursor chemicals (which were in both liquid and solid form) would be destroyed by incineration, neutralization, or mixing with cement.66 A year later, however, Libya approached the United States and requested technical and financial assistance with its CW destruction effort.67 The U.S. government agreed and invited the State Department's NDF and the Department of Defense's Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program to submit bids. NDF estimated that destroying the Libyan CW stockpile would cost $65 million, of which it was prepared to contribute $45 million, and that the project could be completed in two years. CTR, in contrast, estimated a total cost of $156 million and a duration of five years. Not surprisingly, the State Department selected NDF to perform the task.68 One reason for the large discrepancy between the two bids was that the CTR program had to comply with the Pentagon's complex procurement regulations, while NDF was a more flexible, “seat-of-the-pants” type of operation.

In talks with Tripoli, the United States offered to contribute $45 million, or roughly 75 percent of the cost of the project, for the construction and shipping of a high-temperature incinerator to burn the mustard agent. For their part, the Libyans would be expected to finance the construction of an access road and a concrete foundation for the incinerator, as well as the operating expenses. The State Department declined to cover the entire cost of the project because it sought to promote a “partnership” with Libya and wished to avoid to depleting the NDF. Although working-level Libyan officials opposed the cost-sharing arrangement, Robert Joseph reached agreement with the senior leadership, and in December 2006, the United States and Libya signed a contract for the CW destruction facility.69

A company in Ohio built the incinerator and was putting it through proof-testing when, on June 14, 2007, Libya suddenly announced that it was withdrawing from the contract, causing much shock and displeasure on the American side. The ostensible reason for the Libyan pullout was disagreement over the terms of the contract, including liability issues, cost-sharing, and the disposition of the destruction equipment after the CW stockpile had been eliminated, but other motivations were suspected. Companies in Italy and Germany were competing aggressively for the contract, which Qaddafi may have seen as a vehicle to establish long-term commercial ties with key players in Europe. Corruption may have also played a role, since Libyan officials could benefit financially from the project only if their own government paid for it. Yet another possible reason for the Libyan withdrawal was Qaddafi's anger over the U.S. agreement in February 2007 to provide North Korea with 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil in return for its agreement to shut down the nuclear facilities at Yongbyon and allow monitoring and verification by the IAEA.70 According to a U.S. government official, “Libya is a wealthy country, so the contract was never about money. For them, it had symbolic value, and the symbolism quotient shifted with the U.S.–North Korean agreement. Qaddafi did not like the fact that Kim Jong Il had gotten a better deal.”71

Libyan officials also expressed disappointment with the slow pace of progress toward the restoration of full diplomatic relations with Washington and the removal of Libya from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. To take Tripoli off the list, the Bush administration had to certify to Congress that Libya had not been involved in supporting terrorism for an extended period. In early 2004, however, an Arab-American activist admitted in a U.S. court that he had served as a go-between for Libyan officials and Saudi dissidents conspiring to assassinate the Saudi crown prince; Qaddafi had allegedly ordered the killing after he and the prince exchanged insults at an Arab League summit in 2003.72 This scandal was a self-inflicted wound that slowed the pace of normalization with the United States.

In July 2006, the Libyan government asked the OPCW to extend the intermediate and final deadlines for the destruction of its mustard agent stockpile. The organization's top decision-making body, the Conference of the States Parties, granted this request in December 2006, changing Libya's final destruction deadline from April 29, 2007 to December 31, 2010.73 In July 2007, Libya submitted to the OPCW detailed facility information for the Rabta Toxic Chemical Destruction Facility, which will destroy the mustard agent and remaining precursors that Libya has declared.74 Progress has been slow, however, and in July 2009, the Libyan government signaled its intent to ask the OPCW for a further extension of the CW destruction deadline.75

Conversion of Rabta

In July 2004, Libya proposed converting the former production facility at Rabta into a pharmaceutical facility that would produce low-cost drugs and vaccines against AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis for the African market. This request faced a legal obstacle, however. Part V of the CWC Verification Annex provides that in exceptional cases of compelling need, and with the authorization of the decision-making organs of the OPCW, a former CW production facility may be converted to peaceful purposes rather than destroyed, after which it will be subject to the verification regime. To comply with the timelines in the CWC, the conversion process had to be completed within six years after the treaty's entry into force, or by April 29, 2003. Yet when Libya became a party to the CWC on February 5, 2004, the deadline had already passed.

To get around this problem, Libya sought a technical change in the relevant provision of the CWC Verification Annex so that its conversion request could be approved. On October 12, 2004, Eric M. Javits, the U.S. ambassador to the OPCW, urged the Executive Council to support the Libyan proposal because it would provide an incentive to states that had not yet joined the CWC, as well as those that had recently joined and declared former CW production facilities. The Executive Council agreed on October 18 to endorse the technical change.76 Six weeks later, OPCW's Conference of the States Parties authorized the conversion of Rabta.77

The CWC Verification Annex provides that even if the conversion of a former CW production facility has been approved, all of the specialized equipment that was directly involved in the “main production train” for the CW agent, including “any reactor or equipment for product synthesis, separation or purification,” must be destroyed. A key issue related to the conversion of Rabta was how many items of equipment in the dual-use portion of Building 17 were covered by this rule. Members of the U.S.–British technical assistance team believed that more than one reactor on the commercial side of the plant had been used to synthesize TDG, the immediate precursor of sulfur mustard; if that was the case, all such equipment would have to be destroyed. The Libyans, however, insisted that a single glass-lined reactor had been involved in TDG synthesis. After a debate within the U.S. government, Undersecretary of State Bolton decided to give the Libyans a break by agreeing to designate only one reactor in the dual-use side of the plant as specialized CW equipment.78

Redirection of Former CW Scientists

Another conversion-related issue was whether or not the U.S. government should “redirect” former Libyan CW scientists and engineers by providing them with grants for peaceful research so that they would not be tempted to sell their expertise to other proliferant states or terrorist organizations.79 Ultimately, the State Department decided not to provide funding in this case because it assessed the risk of “brain drain” as low. The chemists and engineers formerly employed by the Libyan CW program belonged to a relatively small, elite group. There was no evidence that they had been recruited by would-be proliferators, and the local economy provided a strong demand for their skills.80

Conclusions

Bush administration officials often pointed to Libya's WMD rollback as a model for how other proliferators could make a “strategic choice” to shift course and become accepted members of the international community.81 Yet Libya provides a model only in a general sense. For one thing, the Libyan rollback did not involve any bargaining, a situation that is unlikely to recur. Robert Joseph refused to provide an explicit quid pro quo for Libya's elimination of its WMD programs, although he did suggest that full implementation of the agreement would remove major political obstacles to the lifting of economic sanctions and improved relations with the United States. Nevertheless, if Washington had failed to reward Libya by lifting sanctions and restoring diplomatic ties, it would have poisoned the waters for other WMD possessors considering the voluntary renunciation of their weapons programs.

Libya also differs from other states of CW proliferation concern because it is a small country of only 6 million people, dominated by a proud, idiosyncratic leader who was determined to overcome his pariah status and rejoin the international community. These characteristics do not apply to the other known CW possessor states. According to one analysis, “No other country of concern has indicated its willingness to submit to a similar process, and it is unclear what additional incentives … might be offered to such countries in the current international security environment to cause them to reconsider their strategic choices.”82

Of the CWC holdouts in the Middle East, Syria appears to view its advanced CW capability as a “poor man's deterrent” against Israel, while Egypt may perceive its legacy CW stockpile as a source of political leverage vis-à-vis Israel's undeclared nuclear arsenal.83 Although Syria might possibly have an incentive to accede to the CWC as a means of improving relations with the United States, the sense of isolation in Damascus today is nowhere near as profound as it was in Tripoli in 2003. Israel, for its part, signed the CWC in January 1993 but has so far refused to ratify it. As long as hostile countries in the region such as Syria and possibly Iran (a CWC party) possess chemical weapons, Israel may wish to deter a CW attack by maintaining a degree of ambiguity about its ability to retaliate in kind, given that the implicit threat of nuclear retaliation would be seen as disproportionate and hence not credible.84 Of the remaining non-parties to the CWC, Angola, Myanmar, and North Korea have so far shown no interest in joining the treaty, and Somalia lacks a functioning government. The Libyan precedent may be most relevant to North Korea, but it is unclear how that country's CW program could be uncoupled from the nuclear weapons issue and prevented from becoming a bargaining chip in a broader and more complex negotiation.

Assuming that some or all of the CWC holdout states can eventually be persuaded to join the treaty, however, the Libyan case may still serve as a positive model. Somewhat ironically, although the Libyan rollback began as an ad hoc, trilateral arrangement, it ultimately demonstrated the value of multilateral nonproliferation organizations. When Colonel Qaddafi launched his disarmament initiative, he decided that Libya's relations with London and Washington were so important—and in such tatters—that he had to engage both countries directly. Once the rollback process began, however, the Libyan government did not want to be perceived by other states in the region as being under the thumb of the Western powers. Providing a multilateral framework for Libyan disarmament under the auspices of the OPCW and the IAEA was therefore crucial in enabling Qaddafi to save face. The U.S. and British governments were aware of these political sensitivities and went out of their way to ensure that official statements emphasized the role of the multilateral nonproliferation organizations and the fact that Libya was rejoining the international community.

The OPCW also provided an important source of technical support and reassurance for Libyan officials. The organization showed itself to be highly accommodating by agreeing to Tripoli's request to delay its final and intermediate CW destruction deadlines and by approving the conversion of Rabta after the original treaty provision had expired. OPCW technical experts assisted the Libyans on a wide range of issues (including declarations and inspection procedures) and helped them to understand their rights and obligations under the CWC. More generally, countries that pursue WMD often do so for strategic reasons, and national pride is an important factor in this equation. The collaborative nature of working with the OPCW international inspectorate, and the benefits that come from membership in a respected multilateral regime, can be assets in persuading countries to join the treaty and adhere to international legal norms.

In addition to the OPCW's role in shaping Libya's incentives to abandon its CW program, the organization's direct involvement in verifying the disarmament process was essential to its credibility. Without international verification, significant questions would have remained about the nature and scope of Libya's past CW program, whether it had disarmed fully, and whether the standards normally applied to the termination and dismantling of CW programs had actually been followed. According to former OPCW official Rafael M. Grossi of Argentina, “The framework provided by the organization made the rollback process legitimate and transparent, something that would have been harder to achieve had it remained a trilateral operation.”85

Other practical lessons from the Libyan CW rollback are discussed briefly below.

Utility of multilateral sanctions and export controls

The stringent multilateral economic sanctions imposed on Tripoli by the United Nations, combined with the national export controls on CW precursors and specialized production equipment harmonized by the Australia Group, significantly impeded Libya's clandestine CW program by forcing it to rely on clandestine trafficking networks that often provided shoddy goods at inflated prices. The trade restrictions undermined the effectiveness of the Libyan CW program and strengthened Qaddafi's incentives to abandon it. In addition, the U.S. public-diplomacy campaign during the 1990s to expose Libya's planned CW production facility at Tarhunah, backed up by the threat of military action, raised the political costs and risks of the project to the point that it ceased to be worth the effort. Thus, the Libyan case suggests that a skillful blend of positive incentives, economic sanctions, and counterproliferation measures (such as the interdiction of illicit cargo at sea) can be effective at impeding WMD programs and promoting their rollback.

Need for a flexible disarmament funding mechanism

The State Department's Nonproliferation and Disarmament Fund proved to be an invaluable tool in Libya because of its flexibility and agility. Compared with the Pentagon's much larger CTR program, however, NDF does not have the size, scope, experience, or resources to conduct major disarmament operations, provide peaceful research funding to former WMD scientists, or undertake long-term nonproliferation efforts.86 Thus, reinforcing lessons already learned in the former Soviet republics, the Libyan case demonstrated the need to make the CTR program less bureaucratic and to augment it with a more flexible funding mechanism (ideally with “notwithstanding authority”) to meet unexpected nonproliferation challenges and opportunities as they arise and provide financing on an emergency basis.87

Effectiveness of inspection team operations

The system of rotating the U.S.–British technical assistance teams in and out of Libya on a regular basis proved to be highly effective by providing sufficient time for data analysis and inspection planning. Also of value was the creation of a communications channel (mediated by U.S. and British officials) between the working and senior levels of the Libyan government bureaucracy for the purpose of obtaining approval for access to sensitive facilities and documents.

Ongoing engagement with former proliferators

After a state like Libya has rolled back its WMD programs, it is important for the United States and other like-minded countries that support the nonproliferation regime to maintain strong political and economic ties with the “reformed” country. Without such an ongoing effort, there is a risk that a former proliferator could become alienated from the West and decide to reactivate its WMD programs. Even if Libya were to backslide, however, it would have to start over from scratch because its former programs have been eliminated.

Finally, the Libyan case suggests that stigmatizing the possession of chemical weapons, even when retained for deterrence purposes only, is an effective way to reduce the political utility of these weapons and make them less attractive to would-be proliferators. To that end, the United States should no longer classify chemical weapons as “WMD” because doing so puts them in the same category as nuclear weapons and thereby increases their political currency. Instead, all CWC member states should strive to reinforce the emerging global norm against the possession—as well as use—of chemical weapons. With membership in the CWC approaching universality, the treaty's prohibitions on the development, production, stockpiling, and transfer of chemical weapons may eventually be recognized as customary international law and become binding on non-states parties, as is already the case for the 1925 Geneva Protocol banning the use in war of chemical and biological weapons.

Notes

1. Paula A. DeSutter, assistant secretary of state for verification, compliance, and implementation, “Future of U.S.–Libyan Relations: Testimony before the House International Relations Committee,” 108th Cong., 2nd sess., March 10, 2004.

2. John Hart and Shannon N. Kile, “Libya's Renunciation of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Weapons and Ballistic Missiles,” SIPRI Yearbook 2005: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 2005), pp. 629–48.

3. See Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer, “Libya's Nuclear Turnaround: Perspectives from Tripoli,” Middle East Journal 20 (Winter 2008), pp. 55–72; Bruce W. Jentleson and Christopher A. Whytock, “Who ‘Won’ Libya? The Force-Diplomacy Debate and Its Implications for Theory and Policy,” International Security 30 (Winter 2005/06), pp. 47–86; Dafna Hochman, “Rehabilitating a Rogue: Libya's WMD Reversal and Lessons for US Policy,” Parameters 36 (Spring 2006), pp. 63–78.

4. Other terrorist incidents sponsored by Libya include the April 1984 shooting of a British policewoman during a demonstration outside the Libyan Embassy in London, the April 1986 bombing of the La Belle discotheque in West Berlin that killed two U.S. servicemen and a Turkish woman and injured more than 200 others, and the September 1989 bombing of a UTA French airliner over Niger.

5. John R. Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, “Beyond the Axis of Evil: Additional Threats from Weapons of Mass Destruction,” speech at the Heritage Foundation, Washington, DC, May 6, 2002.

6. “Libya Denies Claims of Chemical Weapons,” BBC News, May 8, 2002, <news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1975365.stm>.

7. Judith Miller, “How Gadhafi Lost His Groove: The Complex Surrender of Libya's WMD,” Wall Street Journal, May 16, 2006, p. A14.

8. Robert G. Joseph, Countering WMD: The Libyan Experience (Fairfax, VA: National Institute Press, 2009), pp. 5–6.

9. Robert G. Joseph, Countering WMD: The Libyan Experience (Fairfax, VA: National Institute Press, 2009)., p. 22.

10. Jeff Stein, “Doubt Cast on Speculation That Libyan Connected to Pan Am Bombing May Be Ambassador to U.S.,” CQ Homeland Security – Intelligence, June 1, 2006, <public.cq.com/public/20060601_homeland_1libya.html>

11. Miller, “How Gadhafi Lost His Groove.”

12. Miller, “How Gadhafi Lost His Groove.”

13. Miller, “How Gadhafi Lost His Groove.”

14. Joseph, Countering WMD, p. 41.

15. Author's interview with Robert G. Joseph, senior scholar at the National Institute for Public Policy and former NSC senior director for counterproliferation, Fairfax, VA, May 28, 2009.

16. Author's interview with Robert G. Joseph, senior scholar at the National Institute for Public Policy and former NSC senior director for counterproliferation, Fairfax, VA, May 28, 2009.

17. John Prados, “How Qaddafi Came Clean,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, November/December 2005, p. 32.

18. Joseph, Countering WMD, p. 57.

19. Judith Miller, “Gadhafi's Leap of Faith,” Wall Street Journal, May 17, 2006, p. A18.

20. Richard Norton-Taylor, “Intelligence Officers Had Role in Deal,” Guardian, December 22, 2003, p. 4.

21. Peter Beaumont, Kamal Ahmed, and Martin Bright, “Deal with Gadaffi: The Meeting that Brought Libya in from the Cold,” Observer (UK), December 21, 2003, p. 6.

22. Joseph, Countering WMD, p. 23.

23. Author's interview with Joseph.

24. Author's interview with Joseph.

25. Beaumont, Ahmed, and Bright, “Deal with Gadaffi: The Meeting that Brought Libya in from the Cold.”

26. Nigel Morris and Andrew Buncombe, “Libya Gives Up Nuclear and Chemical Weapons,” Independent (UK), December 20, 2003.

27. Joseph, Countering WMD, pp. 73–75.

28. Author's interview with Joseph.

29. DeSutter, “Future of U.S.–Libyan Relations: Testimony before the House International Relations Committee.”

30. DeSutter, “Future of U.S.–Libyan Relations: Testimony before the House International Relations Committee.”

31. Author's interview with Joseph.

32. Paula A. DeSutter, assistant secretary of state for verification, compliance, and implementation, “Disarmament of Libya's Weapons of Mass Destruction: Prepared Statement before the House Committee on International Relations, Subcommittee on International Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Human Rights,” 108th Cong., 2nd sess., September 22, 2004.

33. Paula A. DeSutter, assistant secretary of state for verification, compliance, and implementation, “U.S.–Libya Relations: Testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” 108th Cong., 2nd sess., February 26, 2004.

34. Author's interview with Donald A. Mahley, former State Department official, Washington, DC, May 4, 2004.

35. Jonathan B. Tucker, “Monitoring and Verification in a Non-Cooperative Environment: Lessons from the U.N. Experience in Iraq,” Nonproliferation Review 3 (Spring-Summer 1996), pp. 1–14.

36. Author's interview with a U.S. State Department official, Washington, DC, May 18, 2009.

37. Author's interview with Mahley.

38. Author's interview with Joseph.

39. Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, “OPCW Team Visits Libya,” Press Release 04/2004, February 5, 2004.

40. Ralf Trapp, Geneva-based consultant on chemical weapons, e-mail communication to author, July 9, 2009.

41. DeSutter, “Disarmament of Libya's Weapons of Mass Destruction.”

42. Author's interview with a U.S. State Department official.

43. Author's interview with Mahley.

44. Author's interview with Mahley.

45. Miller, “Gadhafi's Leap of Faith.”

46. Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, “Libya Has Trouble Building the Most Deadly Weapons,” The Risk Report 1 (December 1995), pp. 1, 3–4.

47. Douglas Waller, “Target Gaddafi, Again,” Time, April 1, 1996, pp. 46–47.

48. Author's interview with Mahley.

49. Author's interview with Mahley.

50. Author's interview with Mahley.

51. Author's interview with Mahley.

52. Prados, “How Qaddafi Came Clean,” p. 29.

53. Waller, “Target Gaddafi, Again.”

54. Philip Shenon, “Perry, in Egypt, Warns Libya to Halt Chemical Weapons Plant,” New York Times, April 4, 1996, p. A6.

55. On the U.S. nuclear threat against Tarhunah, see Jeffrey Lewis, “Tarhuna CW Facility,” March 25, 2007, <www.armscontrolwonk.com/1440/targhuna-cw-facility>; and Robert Burns, “U.S. Said to Have No Non-Nuclear Way to Destroy Suspect Libyan Plant,” Associated Press, April 23, 1996. On the specialized CW production equipment, see Donald A. Mahley, “Dismantling Libyan Weapons,” The Arena, No. 10 (November 2004), p. 2.

56. Author's interview with Mahley.

57. Author's interview with Mahley.

58. Dany Shoham, “Libya: The First Real Case of Deproliferation in the Middle East?” Disarmament Diplomacy, No. 77 (May/June 2004), <www.acronym.org.uk/dd/dd77/77libya2.htm>.

59. Miller, “Gadhafi's Leap of Faith.”

60. Author's interview with Mahley.

61. Author's interview with Mahley.

62. Author's interview with Mahley.

63. In situations that are considered low risk, such as the destruction of empty chemical shells or a few leaking munitions, the OPCW accepts videotapes or photographs as evidence, backed up with authenticating information such as interviews or a visit to the destruction site.

64. OPCW, “Destruction of Chemical Weapons in Libya Commences on 27 February 2004,” Press Release 06/2004, February 26, 2004; OPCW, “Libya Completes the First Phase of Chemical Weapons Destruction,” Press Release 07/2004, March 4, 2004.

65. “Libya Profile: Chemical Chronology,” Nuclear Threat Initiative/James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, <www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/Libya/Chemical/chronology_2004.html>.

66. Julian Perry Robinson, “Libya and ‘Dual Use,’” CBW Conventions Bulletin, No. 65 (September 2004), p. 2.

67. Michael Nguyen, “Libya Chemical Weapons Destruction Costly,” Arms Control Today, May 2006, p. 28.

68. National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, Global Security Engagement: A New Model for Cooperative Threat Reduction (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2009), p. 36.

69. Author's interview with Joseph.

70. “North Korea Profile: Nuclear Chronology 2007,” Nuclear Threat Initiative/James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, <www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/NK/Nuclear/nk_nuclear_2007.html>.

71. Author's interview with U.S. State Department official.

72. Voice of America, “U.S.: Assassination Plot Allegations Slow Development of Relations with Libya,” December 22, 2004.

73. OPCW Conference of the States Parties, “Decision: Proposal by the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya for the Establishment of Specific Dates for Intermediate Destruction Deadlines, and Its Request for an Extension of the Final Deadline for the Destruction of Its Category 1 Chemical Weapons,” Eleventh Session, C-11/DEC.15, December 8, 2006.

74. OPCW Conference of the States Parties, “Note by the Director-General: Status Report on the Progress Made by Those States Parties that Have Been Granted Extensions of Deadlines for the Destruction of Their Category 1 Chemical Weapons,” Thirteenth Session, C-13/DG.7, November 14, 2008, p. 3.

75. OPCW Executive Council, “Opening Statement by the Director-General to the Executive Council at its Fifty-Seventh Session,” Fifty-Seventh Session, EC-57/DG.15, July 14, 2009, p. 4.

76. OPCW, “OPCW Executive Council Approves Recommendation to Allow for Conversion of Former Chemical Weapon Facility in Libya,” Press Release 50/2004, October 18, 2004.

77. OPCW Conference of the States Parties, “Decision: Request by the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya to Use the Chemical Weapons Production Facilities Rabta Pharmaceutical Factory 1 and Rabta Pharmaceutical Factory 2 (Phase II) in Rabta, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, for Purposes Not Prohibited under the Chemical Weapons Convention,” Ninth Session, C-9/DEC.9, November 30, 2004.

78. Author's interview with Mahley.

79. Michael Roston, Redirection of WMD Scientists in Iraq and Libya: A Status Report (Washington, DC: Russian-American Nuclear Security Advisory Council, April 2004).

80. Author's interview with Mahley.

81. Wade Boese, “U.S. Points to Libya as Disarmament Model: An Interview with Assistant Secretary of State Paula DeSutter,” Arms Control Today, April 2004, p. 29.

82. Hart and Kile, “Libya's Renunciation of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Weapons and Ballistic Missiles,” p. 647.

83. Dany Shoham, “Chemical and Biological Weapons in Egypt,” Nonproliferation Review 5 (Spring-Summer 1998), pp. 48–58; M. Zuhair Diab, “Syria's Chemical and Biological Weapons: Assessing Capabilities and Motivations,” Nonproliferation Review 5 (Fall 1997), pp. 104–11.

84. Gerald M. Steinberg, “Israeli Policy on the CWC,” OPCW Synthesis, November 2002, pp. 29–31; Steve Rodan, “Bitter Choices: Israel's Chemical Dilemma,” Jerusalem Post, August 18, 1997.

85. Rafael M. Grossi, director-general for political coordination, Argentine Ministry of External Relations, International Trade and Worship, e-mail message to author, July 14, 2009.

86. National Research Council, Global Security Engagement: A New Model for Cooperative Threat Reduction (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2009), p. 37.

87. For more on “notwithstanding authority,” see Richard G. Lugar, “Revving Up the Cooperative Nonproliferation Engine,” Nonproliferation Review 15 (July 2008), pp. 349–52.