Iran Denies it Gave Libya Chemical Arms

Iran has dismissed a U.S. news report implicating it in a chemical weapons cache uncovered in Libya, saying it was a champion in fighting to eradicate such arms.

"About the arms delivery to the regime of (toppled Libyan leader Moammar) Gadhafi... The West would do better to look to itself, because Iran has always been at the forefront in the fight against chemical weapons," foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said, according to Iranian media Wednesday.

He was responding to a report Sunday in The Washington Post newspaper that quoted an anonymous U.S. official saying special artillery shells made by Iran and filled by Libya with mustard gas had been discovered in two sites in recent weeks.

Mehmanparast said Iran had experience as a victim of chemical weapons, when mustard gas was used against its troops by Iraq in a 1980-1988 war.

"Western countries have to answer how certain nations supplied the Iraqi regime with such weapons during the Iran-Iraq war," he said.

Tehran says Western countries supplied Baghdad with the chemical weapons.