UN inspectors found in a UN building in New York vials that may contain a potentially deadly chemical original removed from an Iraqi facility by UN a decade ago, an official announced Thursday.

Aerial view of the United Nations in midtown Manhattan, in New York City. 

UN spokesperson Marie Okabe told reporters that UNMOVIC (the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission for Iraq) staff discovered "two small plastic packages with metal and glass containers with unknown liquid substance."

The find was made during the process of archiving UNMOVIC's offices in New York, near the UN Headquarters building, as the commission winds down after the Security Council terminated its mandate in June.

She said an initial probe revealed that the packages were recovered in 1996 from Al Muthanna, a former Iraqi chemical weapons facility, by inspectors with the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM), the predecessor of UNMOVIC.

UNMOVIC said the relevant packages were being handed over to US authorities for removal and destruction. Normally, such items would have been transported directly to appropriately equipped laboratories for analysis.

It is said that an investigation would soon begin into how the hazardous materials came to be in the commission's headquarters.

According to the inspection report containing an inventory of the items, one of the items may contain phosgene (COCL2) suspended in oil -- an old generation chemical warfare agent.

"The inventory also indicated that the other package contains Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) reference standards in sealed glass tubes," Marie said.

UNMOVIC chemical weapons experts sealed the packages and placed them in a safe that was then isolated in a secured room at the headquarters. They also tested the environment surrounding the packages and found no concentration of toxic vapors in the air.

The spokesperson also said that UNMOVIC experts believe the package are properly secured and pose no immediate risk or danger to the immediate public.

Phosgene is a chemical weapon that was used widely in World War I, and in both its gaseous and liquid forms can be potentially life-threatening, causing the lungs to collapse and damaging the eyes, nose, throat and skin. It is also an industrial chemical that can be used in the production of plastics.

UNMOVIC was established by the Security Council in December 1999 to replace UNSCOM and continue the work, which begun in 1991 in the aftermath of the war that followed the invasion of Kuwait, of verifying Iraq's compliance with its obligations to be rid of weapons of mass destruction, whether chemical, biological or long-range missiles. It was also tasked with ensuring that Iraq did not reacquire these weapons.

(Xinhua News Agency August 31, 2007)