Top-level source of spores feared

LONDON - The confirmation that lethal anthrax powder has been sent through the mail to victims in the United States has set alarm bells ringing among bioterrorism experts.

They say that only a state would have the know-how to manufacture the powdered form.

Although Iraq is the only country in the world known to have an active anthrax biowarfare programme, the experts say that Libya, Iran and North Korea are rumoured to have a similar weapons programme.

Russia is also believed to have continued production clandestinely.

Dick Spertzl, a biowarfare consultant based in Maryland who formerly carried out weapons inspections in Iraq, said that "any dedicated individual can learn how to make weapons grade anthrax. If they had an adviser, it would be easier".

But converting the laboratory-produced liquid into powder spores, thus turning the bacteria into a weapon, is much more tricky and would require state backing. "The knowledge of drying is not that common," Spertzl said.

The US, Britain and Russia, the states known to have "weaponised" anthrax, were supposed to destroy their stocks under the terms of the 1972 biological weapons convention. But Russia continued to produce anthrax into the 1990s, a fact which only became known thanks to a key defector.

The defector, Ken Alibek, a former deputy-director of the Russian germ warfare agency known as Biopreparat, told a congressional committee last week that "there are pieces of Biopreparat that are still running, some with a very high level of secrecy".

He also said that "no one knows" where up to 50 Russian scientists possessing anthrax weaponisation secrets might be today.

US investigators say that while bioterrorism is suspected in the US cases, there is no definite link to the al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden. None of the 19 hijackers of the September 11 attacks have been linked to Russia, although the purported ringleader, Mohammed Atta, is reported to have met an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague.

United Nations weapons inspectors charged with disarming Iraq after the Gulf War have not been able to account for nine tonnes of concentrated anthrax in liquid form, which Baghdad claims to have destroyed in 1991.

As the US grapples with a worsening anthrax scare, the Bush Administration is nearing a final decision on an initiative to strengthen preventions against the spread of biological weapons.

The initiative was launched after the Administration rejected a global accord in July. But it has gathered urgency since the anthrax incidents and fears that those wishing to strike the US might turn to chemical or biological weapons.

- INDEPENDENT, REUTERS

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