U.S. Company Warned on Anthrax Claims

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has warned a company to stop making claims that its products protect against anthrax, the Dallas Morning News reported (see GSN, Aug. 24).

Bio-Germ Protection has been marketing its cream and aerosol spray as a way to protect against anthrax infection. The products have been endorsed by a law-enforcement official, a congressman and an academic, according to the Morning News.

Representative Ralph Hall (R-Texas), the lawmaker who endorsed the products, also arranged a meeting between Bio-Germ founder Allen Lord and the head of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, the Morning News reported.

Robert Heiman, developer of the products, said he warned Lord about making the claims. “I’ve been advising Allan to take those statements off [the Web site] for almost a year,” he said.

Heiman added that the administration’s warning does not mean the products do not have the potential to counter anthrax. 

“We’re getting some incredible results, and we’re doing some very extensive research, and I have no problem working with the FDA,” Heiman said. “This is good, solid science.  What happened is Allan just jumped the gun.”

The agency, in the warning sent to Bio-Germ last month, said that the company must immediately stop saying that its products could treat anthrax, plague and other “pathogens possibly used by terrorists.”

“You must immediately correct these violations,” the warning letter said. “If you do not immediately correct them, you may be subject to enforcement action without further notice.”

Bio-Germ subsequently removed the cream and spray from its Web site, according to the Morning News (Michael Grabell, Dallas Morning News, Nov. 25).

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Pentagon Mail Facility Announces Toxin False Alarm

Detectors at a U.S. Defense Department mail facility falsely indicated the presence of trace amounts of a deadly toxin this month, Reuters reported Wednesday (see GSN, March 16).

Tests returned Nov. 19 on mail that had arrived a day earlier, which indicated “a testing anomaly of possible trace amounts of botulinum toxin,” were found to be incorrect by follow-up screenings, said Pentagon spokesman Glenn Flood.

“It was a false alarm. Nobody was harmed,” said Flood.

The incident was the second false alarm for a biological-warfare agent at a Pentagon mail facility this year, Reuters reported (Reuters, Nov. 23).

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Iran Wins Reprieve, West Concedes Uranium Conversion

By Greg Webb
Global Security Newswire

VIENNA — Iran received a diplomatic reprieve late last week as the European Union and the United States agreed to defer their push to report the Iranian nuclear issue to the U.N. Security Council (see GSN, Nov. 23).

Officials gathering here at a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s governing board elected to allow more time for reinvigorated negotiations between Iran and France, Germany and the United Kingdom, the three largest EU nations, which have been spearheading an effort to resolve the nuclear crisis.

Still, while leaving open a “window of opportunity” for continued talks, British Ambassador Peter Jenkins cautioned that the opening would not “stay open forever or under all circumstances.”

While the agency board meetings have often served as the main forum for the international community to discuss Iran’s nuclear ambitions, last week’s meeting was overshadowed by an agreement for renewed EU-Iran talks, which are scheduled for early next week.

Diplomats here told Global Security Newswire that the precise schedule remains to be set but that the meetings would take place Dec. 6 or Dec. 7, most likely in Vienna or possibly Moscow.

The Moscow option has indicated the growing involvement of Russia in a possible resolution to the crisis, which began two years ago, when Iran acknowledged concealing an extensive nuclear program for nearly 20 years. Tehran has steadfastly declared its programs to be peaceful, but the long-time clandestine nature of the program, combined with a still-unsatisfied nuclear agency, has fueled continued Western suspicion of Iran’s nuclear aims.

Moscow has proposed a compromise solution in which it would host a Russian-Iranian facility to enrich uranium to low levels for use in Iranian nuclear power plants.

The success of this proposal remains uncertain. While Iranian diplomats here said they were considering the Russian offer, other officials in Tehran said Iran would insist on having the uranium-enrichment facility on its territory.

“Any proposal that contains producing nuclear fuel inside Iran will be supported by Iran,” said Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi yesterday, the Associated Press reported.

While the Russian proposal focuses on the location of enrichment sites, it tacitly accepts Iran’s intention to convert mined uranium into a gaseous form to make it ready for enrichment.

In a significant concession, the EU nations and the United States have retreated from opposing Iran’s uranium conversion program. Earlier this year, the EU halted talks with Iran after Tehran restarted its conversion facility, but that opposition has faded with the prospect of enrichment taking place outside Iran.

For its part, the United States has made an evolutionary leap in policy. During the Clinton administration and the beginning of the Bush administration, the United States leaned heavily on Russia to end Moscow’s nuclear cooperation with Iran. Russia has nearly completed building a nuclear power plant in Iran at Bushehr and has agreed to supply the fuel for that reactor. Today, Washington appears to have no problem with that relationship and sees such an arrangement as an acceptable path to preventing Iran from acquiring the means to make nuclear weapons, according to officials here.

U.S. Ambassador Gregory Schulte sidestepped the policy change Thursday.

“I’m a very bad historian on that,” he told reporters.

Although the forum for Iran has switched to the next week’s talks, Western nations still seized the opportunity here to continue accusing Iran of having nuclear-weapon ambitions.

In particular, many nations drew attention to a single sentence in a recent report by agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei that said Iran had admitted receiving documents “on the casting and machining of enriched, natural and depleted uranium metal into hemispherical forms.” The documents came from the international nuclear-smuggling network led by former Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who provided Iran with much of its uranium enrichment technology.

While ElBaradei is politically prevented from drawing conclusions from the data the agency gathers, agency member states are not.

As for uranium shaping, “such a process has no application other than the production of nuclear warheads,” said British Ambassador Jenkins on behalf on the European Union.

He criticized Iran for revealing the documents only this year, long after Tehran pledged full cooperation with the agency.

“It is disturbing that a state which practiced a policy of concealment for 18 years should be so reluctant to demonstrate that it no longer has anything to hide. This reluctance makes Iran’s claim that its nuclear program is exclusively peaceful in nature ring hollow,” Jenkins said.

Iran sought to soften the disclosure’s blow by arguing that it had never requested the documents and that Khan had simply included them in a package of other material.

Furthermore, “the information contained in one-and-a-half pages is simple and nonsophisticated information which could be found in open literature and [the] Internet,” said Iranian Ambassador Mohammad Akhondzadeh in his statement to the board Thursday.

He complained also that “it has become the usual practice by the U.S. and terrorist groups supported by this state to fabricate false allegations against Iran.”

U.S. Ambassador Schulte disagreed with Akhondzadeh’s assessment of the documents.

“This is not information that Iran downloaded from the Internet. This is information that they obtained, according to the IAEA, from a nuclear-trafficking network that has provided a nuclear-weapon design to at least one other country,” he told reporters, referring to Khan’s supply of design information to Libya.

Agency officials also privately expressed concern about the documents to GSN, saying they had no purpose but to manufacture nuclear weapons.

British Ambassador Jenkins initiated a minor disturbance on the board when he asked ElBaradei to deliver copies of the documents to the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council for examination.

“It would be helpful if the director general could arrange for the document to be seen by experts from the five nuclear-weapon states,” he said in the British statement to the board on Thursday.

A number of non-nuclear nations quickly objected, however, complaining that providing access to only a portion of the board would be discriminatory. Led by South Africa, the non-nuclear states also argued that such a move “would undermine the director general’s independence and authority,” said one diplomat in the boardroom.

Eventually, Jenkins stepped back and said the United Kingdom was simply offering its services to the agency.

At its meeting in September, the board found Iran to be in noncompliance with its nuclear safeguards obligations, a finding that U.S. officials have argued must lead eventually to the board reporting Iran to the U.N. Security Council. By giving the EU-Iran talks more time, Washington and the EU agreed not to push for such a report at last week’s meeting.

The report was still inevitable, said Schulte.

“The report to the Security Council will come, and it will come at a time of our choosing,” he said. “And that time will be soon if Iran continues to defy the board’s calls to cooperate fully with the IAEA.”

In other business, the board agreed to spend the agency’s share of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize on a fund to train cancer treatment professionals in developing nations. ElBaradei and the agency were awarded 5 million Swedish kronor each last month in recognition of their work toward world peace.

ElBaradei’s portion would go toward funding orphanages in Egypt, according to an agency spokeswoman.

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North Korea Seeks U.S. Compensation for Scrapped Light-Water Reactor Project

Pyongyang today asked for “political and economic” compensation after last week’s decision by an international consortium to scrap a light-water nuclear reactor project in North Korea, Reuters reported (see GSN, Nov. 23).

“Now that the construction of the LWRs came to a final stop, the D.P.R.K. [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] is compelled to blame the U.S. for having overturned the AF [Agreed Framework] and demand it compensate for the political and economic losses it has caused to the former,” the official Korean Central News Agency announced in a commentary.

The 1994 Agreed Framework between North Korea and the United States established the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization to provide the reactors for electricity generation (Reuters, Nov. 28).

Meanwhile, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei on Friday told Japanese Senior Vice Foreign Minister Yasuhisa Shiozaki that six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program are likely to resume in January, Kyodo reported (Kyodo, Nov. 25).

Elsewhere, the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel reported on Saturday that Iran has offered North Korea oil and natural gas as payment for assistance with Tehran’s nuclear program, Reuters reported.

A top Iranian official traveled to Pyongyang last month to make the offer, Der Spiegel quoted unidentified Western intelligence sources as saying (Reuters/ABCnews.com, Nov. 26).

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German Proliferator Receives Prison Sentence

A German court on Thursday sentenced a man to seven years and three months in prison for smuggling dual-use equipment to Pakistan, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Oct. 28).

Rainer V., a German national, was found guilty of providing false information to the German authorities in order to obtain the necessary authorization to supply $470,000 worth of equipment to laboratories operated by Pakistani nuclear pioneer and international nuclear black-marketeer Abdul Qadeer Khan (Agence France-Presse/Dawn (Pakistan), Nov. 24)

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Los Alamos Contract Decision Delayed

A decision on who will run Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has been delayed, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported last week (see GSN, June 13).

Tyler Przybylek, chairman of a group of U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration employees looking into the laboratory’s management, has asked for more time to review proposals to run the site. He said he “does not anticipate a significant delay in the selection decision.”

Przybylek’s group, known as the Source Evaluation Board, is working on a report on the strengths and weaknesses of the bidders. The board will deliver its report to Thomas D’Agostino, deputy administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, according to an agency spokesman.

Representative Tom Udall (D-N.M.) said he was disappointed with the delay. “People have been in a limbo situation up there for a while,” he said. “I certainly hope this is a short delay.”

Senator Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) said he is confident the proper decision will be made.

“I continue to have faith that (the Department of Energy) is conducting a fair, thorough and exhaustive evaluation of the two bids, and I’m confident that no matter what the outcome, the lab will have an excellent management team and the employees will be well treated,” Domenici said in a statement. “I do not expect this delay to inhibit lab operations.”

The University of California and Bechtel National have teamed up on a bid to run the laboratory, as have the University of Texas and Lockheed Martin. The University of California has managed the laboratory on its own since 1943.

Michael Anastasio, head of the University of California partnership, said a decision should not be rushed. “We look forward to that decision, whenever they will make it. So we wait,” he said.

Rod Geer, spokesman for the Texas group, said a decision is eagerly anticipated. “But we also know that (the Department of Energy) and NNSA want to do this right” (Andy Lenderman, Santa Fe New Mexican/RedOrbit.com, Nov. 24).

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Trial Begins for Dutch Businessman Accused of Supplying Iraq with Chemical Weapon Components

Prosecutors in The Hague, Netherlands, last week said Dutch businessman Frans van Anraat sold chemicals to toppled Iraqi President Saddam Hussein with the knowledge that they would be used in chemical attacks, Reuters reported (see GSN, Nov. 22).

“He is being accused of delivering raw materials necessary to build Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons. The use of those weapons by the regime in Baghdad led to the death of thousands in Iraq and Iran,” prosecutor Fred Teeven said. “He is complicit in international crimes.”

The chemicals in question allegedly were used in Iraq’s war with Iran and against Kurds in Iraq, according to Reuters.

A statement by a witness read in the Dutch court said that van Anraat discussed with a business partner how to describe the agents used to make poison gas for something other than use in a weapon. Van Anraat objected to the statement.

“Van Anraat did not know about the intended use of the raw materials and did not know what their final destination was,” said Ruud Gijsen, one of his attorneys.

Van Anraat could face life in prison if convicted. A verdict is due by the end of the month, according to Reuters (Reuters/The Australian, Nov. 23).

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Pentagon Could Make Decision on Europe-Based GMD Interceptor by April, Official Says

The U.S. Defense Department’s decision on a possible third Ground-based Midcourse Defense interceptor site in Europe could be made by April, Inside Missile Defense reported Wednesday (see GSN, Oct. 7).

“We’ve got money loaded in (fiscal year 2006) to begin to do further work in that regard, so I think that this is going to start solidifying in the next … maybe four to five months,” Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, head of the Missile Defense Agency, said on Nov. 15.

Obering said that “only like about $10 million to $30 million” had been allocated for the project in fiscal 2006.

“It’s not a lot of money, but it’s enough that it gets us started on the more detailed site surveys and everything else. We still have several countries that are very interested; now it’s a matter of working the decision package through our department,” he said.

Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic are among the countries interested in hosting such a site, Arms Control Today has reported (John Liang, Inside Missile Defense, Nov. 23).

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China Agrees to Install Nuclear Sensors at Ports

China last week agreed to install at its ports equipment to detect nuclear and radioactive materials.

The installation of the monitors is part of the U.S. Megaports Initiative, a National Nuclear Security Administration plan to assist other countries in efforts to stop shipments of nuclear materials, according to a U.S. State Department release.

“The United States and the People’s Republic of China recognize the importance of joining forces against the threat posed by the trafficking of nuclear and other radioactive materials. This agreement represents a significant step forward in the effort to improve the security of the global maritime shipping network, and furthers both nations’ efforts to work cooperatively in hindering terrorism,” said Linton Brooks, head of the nuclear security administration (U.S. State Department release, Nov. 22).

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