Frank: Well, it's not quite as alarming as it first sounded. This, it, it, it's a Sarin shell from the 1980s, from the Iran/Iraq War, ah, and the Americans believe that the people who planted, the insurgents who planted it, didn't even realise that it contained, nerve gas. It was what's called an IED, an improvised explosive device, in other words, a, a kind of booby trap set to go off, to ambush, troops...

Jim: So, just to be absolutely clear, this is not, uh, the lurking, uh, WMD, that we've all been looking for.

Frank: Well it depends which way you look at it.

Jim: Yes.

Frank: Bill Rummell, the Foreign Office Minister of State yesterday in the Commons, said I think we should point out that this is part of the banned weapons, that shows that Saddam did have banned weapons he wasn't supposed to have. Ahm, uh, however, eh, a chemical weapons expert that we interviewed yesterday said that this is just some bit of rubbish left over from the 80s and it certainly doesn't constitute WMD, and I think we should point out here, that, that there really is only one weapon of mass destruction, that's a nuclear bomb. Uh, I have to say that in my book, and I'm not an expert but, uh, artillery shells don't really count.

Jim: Of course it was known at the time of all the UN discussion on these matters, Dr Blix acknowledged it, this sort of stuff, I'm sure Sarin was mentioned, was around, that wasn't part of the debate, I mean the argument was, was there something more, of more recent vintage that was going on despite the inspections.

Frank: That's correct. I mean this, this is, this is left over from the time that Iraq was experimenting with different munitions during its war with Iran. Having said that though, ahm, it's what's called a binary weapon, it contain, the shell contains two harmless chemicals, which when it's fired, uh, whizzes through the barrel and rotates at great speed, they combine together and then, when it lands, it creates a cloud of Sarin gas. In this case it wasn't fired from artillery because the insurgents at the moment don't have any, any artillery. Ahm, so its effects were very limited, two US soldiers were treated in hospital, or treated medically, for those very mild effects. Had it actually been fired, then I think we would be talking something very different. Interestingly Jim, this is the second such incident in ten days, the Americans have, uh in Washington told me, that they had a similar incident, ten days ago, a shell being rigged that contained mustard gas. So of course this is prompting, the fear that amongst troops on the ground, do they now have to carry chemical protection equipment.