‘US wanted to test deadly nerve gases on Australian troops’

[LRE]

‘US wanted to test deadly nerve gases on Australian troops’

SYDNEY: The United States military wanted to test deadly nerve gases on Australian troops in a remote area of far north Queensland in the 1960s but Canberra refused, a report said on Sunday. Washington wanted to bomb a rainforest area lying more than 600 kilometres north of Cairns, Channel Nine’s ‘Sunday’ programme reported, citing newly declassified documents from the Australian Defence Department. In 1962, then US defence secretary Robert McNamara wrote to Australian officials asking that the US and Australian military conduct secret joint testing of several nerve agents, including sarin, said the report. “The United States proposes to use the agents GB (sarin), a non-persistent nerve gas, and VX, a persistent nerve gas - both to be disseminated by aircraft delivered by bombs and tanks,” it quoted one document as reading. Around 200 Australian soldiers would have been involved in the testing to “determine persistency of chemical agents on jungle foliage and pick-up of such agents by personnel traversing area under simulated military operation.” afp

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp...2008_pg4_9