Tehran: Iran has dismissed a US news report
implicating it in a chemical weapons cache uncovered in Libya,
saying it was a champion in fighting to eradicate such arms.
"About the arms delivery to the regime of (toppled Libyan
leader Muammar) Gaddafi... The West would do better to look to
itself, because Iran has always been at the forefront in the
fight against chemical weapons," foreign ministry spokesman
Ramin Mehmanparast said, according to Iranian media today.
He was responding to a report Sunday in The Washington
Post newspaper that quoted an anonymous US official saying
special artillery shells made by Iran and filled by Libya with
mustard gas had been discovered in two sites in recent weeks.
Mehmanparast said Iran had experience as a victim of
chemical weapons, when mustard gas was used against its troops
by Iraq in a 1980-1988 war.
"Western countries have to answer how certain nations
supplied the Iraqi regime with such weapons during the
Iran-Iraq war," he said.
Tehran says Western countries supplied Baghdad with the
chemical weapons.
PTI
