Tripoli: Former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s secret cache of chemical weapons has been found in Libya, proving that the tyrant had refused to give up his weapons of mass destruction, despite promising former British prime minister Tony Blair he would hand them over in the infamous ‘Deal in the Desert’.
The National Transitional Council has said the chemical warheads have been secured and would be made safe by experts, the Daily Mail reports.
“They are from the Gaddafi era and are under guard until they can be handed over,” the paper quoted a spokesman, as saying.
Gaddafi had earlier agreed to destroy most of his weapons of mass destruction in 2003 as part of moves to bring Libya, then a pariah state, in from the cold.
The agreement was sealed in 2004 when Blair shook hands with Gaddafi in Tripoli.
The disarming process was being overseen by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, but was never finished because of the outbreak of war, the paper said.
The dictator retained around ten tons of deadly mustard gas and other chemicals.
Throughout the uprising, rebels feared Gaddafi would unleash WMD on his own people.
ANI
First Published: Thursday, October 27, 2011, 12:35