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Experts Say WMD Threat Exaggerated
Experts speaking today in Australia played down the risk that terrorists could use weapons of mass destruction, Reuters reported (see GSN, Oct. 26, 2005). Some speakers at a one-day conference on WMD threats contended that terrorists were more likely to use conventional weapons. “The most likely terrorist threat is likely to be more ordinary and familiar, but still deadly in its own way,” said Lawrence Freedman, a professor of war studies at King’s College in London. Freedman said that finding people with expertise in weapons of mass destruction would make it difficult for terrorists to develop the weapons undetected. Robert Ayson of the Australian National University agreed with Freedman. He said that the debates on terrorist threats and WMD proliferation should be separate. “We should be disarming our nightmares,” he said. “In 10 years’ time, we will look back and see the threat as exaggerated.” Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer disagreed. “Unhappily, the threat of terrorists attempting such attacks is not a hypothetical problem. There is more than enough evidence of both intent and attempts to acquire and use weapons of mass destruction,” he said. As evidence, Downer claimed that al-Qaeda was attempting to develop biological weapons in 2001 and that Jordanian officials in 2004 foiled a chemical weapons plot by the Abu Musab al-Zarqawi terror network (see GSN, Dec. 20, 2005). A basic manual for making chemical and biological weapons was found in 2003 in a safe house in the Philippines used by terrorists, he said. Acting U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Threat Reduction Donald Mahley said the United States remains concerned about biological weapons and would continue to work to prevent them from being developed and used (Reuters/New York Times, Feb. 7).
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