Russian military suspected as source of anthrax

The hunt for the source of the weapons-grade anthrax that shut down the heart of the American political establishment yesterday has already produced many false trails.

Much of the focus has been on Iraq, but according to the world's leading germ warfare experts the finger of suspicion points more directly at Russia's broken-down military industrial complex.

If the finger of suspicion falls on any one country "the obvious one is Russia, it's a league ahead of Iraq", said David Kelly, a senior adviser to UN weapons inspectors for Iraq.

Other countries that are thought to be working on a biological weapons programme include Iran, North Korea, Libya, Cuba, Egypt and Pakistan.

Unemployed top Russian scientists who helped to run the Soviet Union's illegal and secret germ warfare programme appear to be a likely source of the anthrax outbreak in the United States. It is known that Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida network has tried to buy ingredients for weapons of mass destruction in Russia in recent years.

The secret Russian germ warfare programme was set up in the 1970s to allow Moscow to cheat on its treaty commitments to destroy all its anthrax and other germ warfare stocks. Experts believe parts of the programme are still operating today.

Moreover, the scientists who worked on the programme until it was officially disbanded in 1992 may have sold their secrets on the open market. Mr Kelly said that of the 30,000 people who worked for the Soviet agency known as Biopreparat, "between three and four thousand were professional scientists. Some would be available to go elsewhere."

The al-Qaeda network is known to be awash with funds, thanks to the fundraising activities of Saudi-based charities and Mr bin Laden's personal fortune.

The full extent of Russia's cheating was revealed to the CIA by Ken Alibek, the deputy director of Biopreparat, when he defected in 1992.

Mr Alibek has described how the Soviet Union churned out two tons of anthrax a day at Stepanagorsk in Kazakhstan and said the Russians covered up an outbreak of anthrax in the Urals in 1979. He told a United States congressional committee last week: "There are pieces of Biopreparat that are still running, some with a very high level of secrecy."

No one knows where up to 50 Russian scientists possessing secrets on weapons-grade anthrax may be today, he added.

The strain found to have affected the 34 staff members of the US Senate yesterday was a highly potent, finely milled weapons-grade powder.

Dick Spertzl, a biowarfare expert in America, said: "Any dedicated individual can learn how to make weapons-grade anthrax. If they had an adviser, it would be easier."

But turning the laboratory-produced liquid into the powder spores is much harder. "The knowledge of drying is not that common," Mr Spertzl said.

- INDEPENDENT