U.S. Accuses Iraq, Iran & North Korea of Germ Labs

15/05/2001| IslamWeb

GENEVA (Islamweb & News AGencies) - The United States accused Iraq, North Korea and four other countries on Monday of building germ-warfare arsenals, and said it worried one of them might be helping Osama bin Laden in his quest for biological weapons.``We are concerned that he (bin Laden)could have been trying to acquire a rudimentary biological weapons capability, possibly with support from a state,'' said John R. Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control.
Bolton refused to say which government might be involved.
The existence of Iraq's program is ``beyond dispute,'' he said, while stopping short of making a direct linkage to bin Laden.
Nor did he say whether any of the five other countries he cited as being at various stages of germ-warfare development - Libya, Syria, Iran and Sudan as well as North Korea - are suspected of trying to supply bin Laden.
Bolton spoke at the start of a three-week conference to review 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, which has been ratified by 144 countries.
Iraq immediately rejected the allegation it was violating the global ban on germ warfare and said the United States was making the claim as a pretext for an attack on Baghdad.
On Sunday, Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser, left open the possibility that Iraq could become a target in Bush's war on terrorism.
``We do not need the events of September 11 to tell us that (Saddam Hussein) is a very dangerous man who is a threat to his own people, a threat to the region and a threat to us because he is determined to acquire weapons of mass destruction,'' she said.
Anthrax-tainted letters that have led to the deaths of four people in the United States have focused attention on the threat of biological warfare.
Iran's ambassador to the conference, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, called the U.S. allegations ``baseless.'' The United States made the accusations to sow discord into attempts to strengthen the treaty, he said.
Libya also denied having a biological weapons program.
Last summer, the United States shocked other treaty countries by rejecting six years of negotiations on a verification system to strengthen the 1972 treaty.
Bolton said the proposed enforcement mechanism, described in 210-page document, was ``hopelessly defective'' and would not be resurrected.
The United States has the world's largest biotech industry.