Letter: Belgrade's answer

Sir: I would like to correct Mark Frankel (letter, 23 March) who claims that Serbia has "no weapons of mass destruction".

Prior to the war in the former Yugoslavia, the Yugoslav People's Army was known to have an extensive and sophisticated chemical weapons programme that produced the nerve gas sarin, the blister agent sulfur mustard, the psychochemical incapacitant BZ, the irritants CS, CN and chloropicrin as well as the deadly choking agent phosgene and the psychochemical incapacitant LSD-25. There are four known facilities that have produced - and possibly continue to produce - chemical weapons, Prva Iskra, Miloje Blagojevic, Miloje Zakic and Merima - all in Serbia.

There is substantial evidence to suggest that the Serbs used chemical weapons on Muslim boys and men fleeing the "safe area" of Srebrenica during July 1995. The evidence is difficult to collect, for some of the chemicals are difficult to detect and we have had to rely on the testimonies of the few survivors; most of the boys and men, around 10,000, lie in mass graves.

SHAMEEM BHATIA

Preston, Lancashire