Yes, I taught toxic chemistry to the first OPCW teams. They were invited to Le Bouchet. It is at this point that the center is a little out of the shade. They were visited in our laboratories and introduced to the process of manufacturing and dismantling chemical weapons.
After that, did you do multiple inspections yourself?
Yes, I went to Yugoslavia during the civil war. In Sarajevo, there was a chemical weapons training ground, and in Mostar, a toxic manufacturing site. I had to check that our soldiers who were there were not at risk. That was the case because everything was dismantled. From 1996, I visited Iraq very often. I was the chemical adviser to Unscom, the international organization responsible for dismantling the country's weapons of mass destruction. I was asked to be an expert to analyze the Iraqi documentation. I also visited the complex of Al-Muthanna, a huge factory, 5 kilometers out of 5, very protected, in the middle of the desert. I talked about the hours with Amir al-Saadi, the program's leader, a man as strong in ballistics as he was in chemistry or biology.
What did you discover in Baghdad?
During its war with Iran, Iraq was able to provide itself without problem to Western countries for its chemical weaponry. After the conflict, the Iraqis, who had noticed the benefits of toxic agents in trench warfare, wanted to produce more sophisticated ones, notably the VX. But from the early 1990s, the big powers closed the tap and established an informal group, called the Australia Group (because it meets at the Australian embassy in Paris), to control exports of products Suspects. As a result, Iraq has failed to create a modern arsenal. So in 2003 the Americans did not find any such weapons in Iraq.
That did not surprise you at all, did you?
No. In 2003, I was advising Hans Blix, the boss of the UN inspectors in Iraq. I told him that I did not believe that the Iraqis had a militarily operational chemical stock, especially because they did not know how to make pure products. I have also informally informed the French authorities. But the Americans were determined to attack ...
