[fintstone]

Lt. Col. Fadil Vucaj pointed out the multiple layers of security and
explained, in the matter-of-fact language of a career military officer, why
such unusual protections were needed.
"These chemicals stored here could be used as weapons of mass destruction,"
said Vucaj, a chemical weapons expert. "You could spray them from an
airplane or use them in a bomb. They are ready to be used, just as they
are."
Inside the building are row after row of containers and bottles of various
colors and sizes. Most are red cylinders roughly the size of a propane tank.
Numerals and, in some cases, Chinese characters are clearly visible on the
outer casing. The Chinese writing identifies the contents of each container
but not the origin. Altogether, the bunkers hold nearly 600 vessels
containing about 16 tons of what is known in military jargon as "bulk
agent."
The chemicals inside the canisters are products of an early generation of
chemical weapons engineering. Yperite, a colorless or brown liquid with a
garlicky odor, was the chief cause of death and injury from chemical warfare
during World War I. Lewisite was the result of a U.S. attempt to improve on
Yperite's lethality, but its invention in 1918 came too late for its use in
the Great War. Other chemicals in the stockpile include a yperite-lewisite
blend sometimes known as HL, as well as other chemicals designed to
incapacitate, rather than kill.
The Albanian chemicals aren't nearly as deadly as more modern nerve agents,
such as sarin and VX. But if released in a crowded stadium or subway car,
they could cause scores or perhaps hundreds of casualties, U.S. and Albanian
officials say. And, before their rediscovery by the Albanians, they would
have been an easy target for thieves.
"The tanks are in good condition, they don't leak, and they are portable,"
Vucaj said. "To terrorists, they would have been very attractive."
A History of Isolation
Hoxha's intentions in acquiring the chemicals can be reliably deduced from
his record as Europe's long-serving communist autocrat. After taking control
of the country in 1944, the xenophobic Hoxha (pronounced HOE-djah) alienated
one powerful ally after another as he led his impoverished country into
extreme isolation.
An admirer of Joseph Stalin, Hoxha broke with the Soviet Union in the late
1960s after denouncing Nikita Khrushchev for straying from Marxist
principles. He publicly applauded Mao Zedong's brutal Cultural Revolution in
the late 1960s, a move that briefly earned Albania special status as China's
proxy at the United Nations and its chief ally in Europe. China rewarded
Hoxha with massive amounts of economic and military aid, including large
quantities of arms.
It was during this period, probably in the middle 1970s, that Albania
acquired the chemicals, U.S. and Albanian officials say. To analysts, the
Chinese pedigree of the chemicals is self-evident, given the Chinese labels
on the canisters and the close military ties that existed between the two
countries. China has acknowledged producing chemical weapons in the past,
although it now says its stockpiles and production facilities have all been
destroyed.
The Albanians are less willing to point fingers. "Where the material came
from is a question for technicians to answer," said Pandeli Majko, Albania's
37-year-old defense minister and a former prime minister. "For us, the
important thing is that it is being destroyed."
The arms pipeline between Albania and the Chinese military machine went dry
in the late 1970s when Hoxha soured on his new partners, publicly scolding
the Chinese for seeking to normalize ties with the West. By 1979, Albania
was virtually friendless in the world, with a plummeting standard of living
that already was the lowest in Europe.
To keep control over his population, Hoxha stoked fears of an imminent
invasion by any of a number of foreign armies said to be plotting together
to destroy what he called his "workers' paradise" -- a favorite phrase among
communist leaders. He drafted legions of laborers for Albania's most
ambitious public works project: the construction throughout the country of
750,000 military bunkers, one for every four Albanians living at the time.
The purchase of the chemicals suggests that Hoxha might have believed the
invasion threat was real.
"It would be typical of him, given his mind-set at the time," said one U.S.
intelligence analyst who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.
"It's the same mind-set that produced three-quarters of a million bunkers
and such large numbers of conventional weapons. If Russia, the United States
and Yugoslavia are all planning to attack you, you do whatever you can to
defend the motherland."
Destruction to Begin in 2006
If all goes according to plan, sometime in 2006 a custom-made mobile
incinerator will arrive in Albania from the United States to begin the
process of physically destroying Hoxha's chemical stockpile. Trucks will
haul the machine across the steep mountain roads to the very door of the
bunker where the chemicals are now stored.
Albania signed the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1993. The treaty, signed
by 167 nations, required disclosure and destruction of chemical weapons by
1997, although many signatories have failed to meet the deadlines. Albania's
discovery of the chemicals last year meant that it was out of compliance
with the treaty; destruction of them will bring it back into good standing
with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the
international chemical arms watchdog agency.
Already, Albania has garnered international praise for immediately
disclosing the existence of the stockpile, then moving quickly to secure the
chemicals in preparation for their destruction.
"Anytime a country comes clean about a chemical weapons stockpile and then
moves to destroy it, it reinforces the norm against these weapons and
reduces the potential for a diversion," said Jonathan Tucker, a chemical
weapons expert and senior researcher at the Center for Nonproliferation
Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
For its efforts, Albania is to receive $20 million in U.S. aid to pay for
the physical destruction of the stockpile. As a country with ambitions to
someday join NATO and the European Union, Albania also gets a chance to
strengthen ties with Western nations and to burnish its credentials as a
partner in the global effort against terrorism. Majko, the defense minister,
said his country's actions reflect a "psychological" break with the past.
"After the Cold War, we have passed from a phase of irresponsibility and
entered a phase of responsibility and transparency," Majko said.
"Transparency means not only saying, but doing."
With the planned destruction of the chemicals, the United States also is
crossing a threshold, though one less heralded. The $20 million set aside
for Albania by the Bush administration is the first U.S. money earmarked for
eliminating unconventional weapons anywhere outside the former Soviet Union.
While the United States has spent billions helping Russia destroy missile
warheads and retrain weapons scientists, government regulations have for
years blocked the use of federal funds to eliminate similar threats
elsewhere in the world. Two years ago, State Department officials had to
turn to a private organization, the Nuclear Threat Initiative, founded by
Ted Turner and former senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), to fund a plan to remove
weapons-grade uranium from a nuclear reactor in the former Yugoslavia.
Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), who has proposed legislation to lift the
spending restrictions, argues that destroying weapons stockpiles such as the
one in Albania should be near the top of the nation's defense priorities.
"The president has argued, quite correctly, that the most important security
problem in the world is the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction,"
Lugar said. "Yet to this day, there are some people who oppose spending this
money -- people who say that the Russians and the Albanians should take care
of their own problems.
"But given how these weapons are already dispersed, there's a real
possibility that one could be stolen and used to kill a lot of people,"
Lugar said. "To me, you can't do enough to make sure the American people are
spared from that sort of thing."