Cheney Prepares to Halt All Chemical Weapons Output

WASHINGTON —  Defense Secretary Dick Cheney has canceled planned tests of the nation’s newest chemical weapon and is preparing to put all U.S. chemical weapons production facilities in mothballs, defense officials said Wednesday.

In the first concrete actions resulting from the U.S.-Soviet agreement last month to slash poison gas stockpiles, Cheney also is withdrawing the Administration’s request for $140 million in new production funds for binary chemical warheads for artillery shells and bombs. Moreover, he ordered that a program to develop a rocket-launched chemical warhead instead be limited to research only. “It boils down to this,” a Defense Department spokesman said. “The guidance from the secretary is to be prepared to halt production of all systems” as soon as the agreement signed June 1 by President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev becomes legally binding.

The pact, which is an “executive agreement” rather than a formal treaty, will go into effect after ratification by the U.S. and Soviet legislatures--an action expected sometime next year.

The decision affects all three of the nation’s ongoing offensive chemical weapons programs: the Navy’s Bigeye bomb, the nation’s newest, the 155-millimeter artillery shell for the Army, and the chemical warhead for the Army’s multiple launch rocket system.

The technically troubled Bigeye was scheduled for testing this fall. The artillery shell is in production at Pine Bluff, Ark., and Shreveport, La. And the rocket warhead is still in the research stage.

All three employ so-called “binary” technology, meaning that the weapons carry two chemical agents that are harmless until mixed together shortly before reaching their target.

The U.S.-Soviet agreement calls for both nations to halt production of chemical weapons as soon as the agreement is ratified and for destruction of existing stockpiles to begin no later than the end of 1992.

Under the pact, the United States will advise the Soviet Union on how to safely get rid of the weapons--if the eight U.S. incinerators being built to destroy chemical arms work as designed.

Also under the agreement, each side can retain no more than 5,000 metric tons of the weapons after the year 2002. The United States currently acknowledges possession of about 25,000 tons of the weapons; the Soviets say that they have 50,000 tons in storage, but U.S. intelligence agencies believe that the Soviet stockpile is much larger.

As a result of the agreement, Cheney has notified Congress that the Pentagon no longer will seek the previously requested $74.3 million in fiscal year 1991 funds for production of the 155-millimeter chemical shell and $66.7 million for building the Bigeye bomb. About $57 million is being spent on the two programs in the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

A defense official said that Cheney ordered the military to prepare to put the production facilities for the artillery shell and the Bigeye bomb “in a laid-away status,” Pentagonese for mothballed.

The Pentagon will continue to seek most of the $27.8 million in requested research funds for the Army’s rocket-launcher warhead, officials said.

Citing a need to keep the remaining chemical deterrent credible, Cheney has ordered some attack aircraft modified to deliver the residual chemical weapons, most of which are in liquid form to be sprayed on a battlefield.

Sen. David Pryor (D-Ark.), a vociferous opponent of chemical weapons, welcomed Cheney’s actions, while saying that they are long overdue.

“The inevitable has happened. I don’t think anyone will be or should be surprised by Secretary Cheney’s decision,” he said.

A knowledgeable Senate aide said that if the Pentagon had not canceled the programs, Congress almost certainly would have.

The United States resumed production of chemical weapons in 1987 after an 18-year halt. Congress ordered the destruction of existing weapons by 1997 because they are obsolete and dangerous but the Pentagon argued that it needed to retain some to deter a gas attack on U.S. troops.

The prime contractor for construction of the 155-millimeter shells is the Marquardt Co. of Van Nuys, which has come under close government scrutiny for alleged quality control problems and its ties to one of the central figures in the “Ill Wind” investigation of defense procurement fraud.

The firm revamped its quality control programs last year after the Pentagon threatened to take away its government business. It has not been charged with any wrongdoing in connection with the corruption investigation.

Elisa D. Harris, a chemical weapons specialist at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said that the Administration had no alternative but to halt the programs.

“These decisions are entirely consistent with the bilateral agreement,” she said. “It would have been surprising if the Administration had pushed for the (fiscal year 1991) money. That makes no sense from the fiscal or military perspective.”

The U.S.-Soviet accord is intended as a prelude to a global ban on chemical weapons.