The chief U.N. weapons inspectors this morning were critical of Iraq’s cooperation in providing information about its WMD programs but said they needed more time to come to any definitive conclusions (see GSN, Jan. 24).
Addressing the Security Council, Hans Blix, the chairman of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, detailed the first 60 days of their inspections as authorized by Security Council Resolution 1441.
Blix said Iraq’s cooperation on process, such as allowing inspectors to go where they please, “has been provided to all sites we have wanted to inspect,” but that similar cooperation on substantive questions is still needed. In particular, he highlighted question over the nerve gas VX and the biological agent anthrax. Iraq’s contention is that the VX program was experimental and the gas was never “weaponized.” Blix said, however, there are “indications that the agent was weaponized.” He also said there are “several thousands of chemical rockets that are unaccounted for” and questions concerning the recent discovery of a supply of thiodiglycol, a mustard gas precursor.
Blix said there is “no convincing evidence” that Iraq has destroyed the anthrax it says it produced prior to the Gulf War in 1991.
“It is not enough to open doors,” Blix said. “Inspection is not a game of ‘catch as catch can.’ ... Rather, it is designed to lead to trust, if there is both openness to the inspectors and action to present them with items to destroy or credible evidence about the absence of any such items.”
According to ElBaradei, “We have to date found no evidence that Iraq has revived its nuclear weapons program. … However, our work is steadily progressing and should be allowed to run its natural course.” He added, “We should be able within the next few months to provide credible assurance that Iraq has no nuclear weapons program.”
Following the briefings by the two experts, U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said, “Nothing gives us hope” that Iraq “will fully comply. ... They are not cooperating unconditionally.”
The council went into closed-door consultations after the public briefing by Blix and ElBaradei.
Iraq Responds
Responding to the report in remarks to the press, Iraqi U.N. Ambassador Mohammed al-Douri said, “We opened all doors to Dr. Blix and his team. ... We have no hidden reports at all.” He added, “There [is] no more need for inspectors, but if they feel there is a need, then we will cooperate with them.”
Al-Douri added, “No country in the world has disarmed as Iraq [did] from 1991 to 1998” (Jim Wurst, GSN, Jan. 27).
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said today that Bush “still hopes this can be resolved peacefully” and that “he does not want to lead the nation to war.” Fleischer added that “there’s no reason it has to take this long” to conduct weapons inspections in Iraq and that Bush is concerned about saving U.S. lives and is worried about a potential situation that “can be far, far worse than the crisis seen on Sept. 11” (Angela Stephens, GSN, Jan. 27).
United States to Hold Off on War Decision
Bush administration officials said last week that they would allow inspections to continue for possibly several more weeks before urging the Security Council to make a decision on Iraq’s compliance, according to the New York Times.
White House officials said they were willing to accept the delay, which would be used to develop a stronger case for military action against Iraq. The officials said, however, that they did not want the inspections to continue for three or four more months.
In his State of the Union address tomorrow night, President Bush plans to present a strong argument against Hussein, White House officials said. Bush’s remarks, however, will stop short of being a call for war, they said.
“This speech is not to declare war,” said White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett. “It’s a speech to continue educating the public about why we’re taking the course we are,” he added (Bumiller/Weisman, New York Times, Jan. 25).
Security Council Debate
The United Kingdom is considering urging the United Nations to vote on a deadline similar to the six-week deadline imposed on Iraq in 1990 to withdraw from Kuwait, according to the London Times. The deadline could be set as soon as early March, the Times reported. In that scenario, inspectors would report on their progress on March 1 and then create a “work program” and a list of remaining disarmament tasks Iraq would have to complete (London Times, Jan. 27).
“Great Coalition” Needed, Powell Says
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said yesterday that the international community must form a “great coalition” to ensure that Baghdad abandons its weapons of mass destruction.
“We are where we are today with Iraq because Saddam Hussein and his regime have repeatedly violated the trust of the United Nations, his people and his neighbors, to such an extent as to pose a grave danger to international peace and security,” Powell said in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
The United States knew it would face a moment when it might be forced to act against its enemies, according to Powell.
“We are probably approaching one such moment now,” he said. “We will have to take that next step and history will judge us as to whether or not we have the strength, the fortitude and the willingness to take that next step,” he added.
He said that members of the U.N. Security Council knew that military force was a possibility when they warned of “serious consequences” if Iraq did not comply with U.N. resolutions.
“There was no confusion on this point,” he said. “Everybody knew what that meant,” he added.
Powell also said that Iraq is tied to terrorist organizations.
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has “clear ties to terrorist groups including al-Qaeda,” he said.
U.S. intelligence sources will not guarantee that U.N. inspectors will find Iraq’s alleged stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, according to Powell.
“The support of U.S. intelligence and the intelligence of other nations can take the inspectors only so far,” Powell said. “Without Iraq’s full and active cooperation, the 100 or so inspectors would have to look under every roof and search the back of every truck in a country the size of California to find the munitions and programs for which Iraq has failed to account,” he added (Peter Slevin, Washington Post, Jan. 27).
Powell said that the United States will release evidence of Iraq’s hidden weapons programs in the coming “days and weeks,” but he put the onus on Iraq to prove it destroyed its earlier stockpiles.
“Where is the evidence, where is the evidence, that Iraq has destroyed the tens of thousands of liters of anthrax and (botulism bacterium) we know it had before it expelled the previous inspectors?” Powell asked. “What happened to nearly 30,000 munitions capable of carrying chemical agents? The inspectors can only account for 16 of them,” he added (Wall Street Journal, Jan. 27).
Powell also faulted Iraq’s weapons report, saying that Baghdad “attempted to conceal with volume what it lacked in veracity.”
“It has failed the test,” he added (AFX News, Jan. 27).
Iraq Sees War on Horizon
Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri said Powell told a “series of lies” in his Davos speech (Associated Press/MSNBC.com, Jan. 26).
Iraqi officials said that they see a war as inevitable but appealed to the United States to avoid a conflict, the Washington Post reported. The U.S. military buildup has made a war difficult to avoid, but Iraq is “doing all the things we think can prevent war,” said Gen. Amir Saadi, a top Iraqi official and a trusted Hussein aide.
“When preparations for war go to this extent, if we go by the First World War and the Second World War, simply mobilizing is enough to make the process irreversible,” Saadi said. “One tends to think it’s coming no matter what we do,” he said.
Iraqi officials also said that complaints about a lack of private interviews with Iraqi scientists and the uncertain status of U-2 spy plane flights over Iraq were merely ploys to distract the world from Baghdad’s cooperation.
“They keep changing the goal posts,” said Lt. Gen. Hussam Mohamed Amin, the head of Iraq’s weapons monitoring directorate.
“The onus is on us to prove we don’t have any” weapons of mass destruction, Saadi said. “Is that credible? Is that just? How can you prove a negative?” he asked (Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post, Jan. 26).
Meanwhile, tests being conducted on samples taken from Iraqi facilities have yet to turn up evidence of radiation or an illicit nuclear weapons program, Reuters reported.
“Until now there is practically nothing detectable which would conclude (there is) a nuclear weapons program,” said Gabriele Voigt, director of a U.N. laboratory in Seibersdorf, Austria. Technicians at the laboratory have tested 16 of 20 swabs taken by inspectors.
“You always detect something,” Voigt said. But there was “nothing which would really allow conclusions that something illegal is going on,” she added (Reuters/Planet Ark, Jan. 27).
Intelligence
Meanwhile, the United States is planning to make public some of the evidence it has that Iraq still possess weapons of mass destruction, Powell said in a news report today.
“The United States possesses several pieces of information which come from the work of our intelligence that show Iraq maintains prohibited weapons,” Powell told Corriere della Sera. “Once we have made sure it can be done safely, I think that in the next week or soon after we can make public a good part of this material,” he added (Reuters, Jan. 27).
U.S. intelligence officials, however, have called on the White House to withhold providing crucial intelligence information in order to protect both human and technical sources — a request the administration has so far agreed to, Pentagon and intelligence officials said.
Bush is expected to release some new information on Iraq during his State of the Union address, according to senior administration officials. A CIA team has been working to compile information for the president to make public if such a decision is made to do so.
“We have more information and knowledge, much of it highly classified,” Powell said on PBS’s The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer last week. “I hope we’ll have the opportunity to present this,” he added.
The most sensitive information will remain secret unless its release is absolutely necessary to make a case for military action, according to White House and intelligence officials. A decision on what information, and how much, to reveal could be made by the end of the week, administration officials said.
The White House national security team is conducting a type of “cost-benefit analysis” on what information to reveal, balancing the support that might be gained by its release with the potential damage to U.S. information gathering methods, according to a senior Pentagon official.
“You can throw out all your sources and methods and compromise all your human sources and still not convince the international community,” the official said (John Diamond, USA Today, Jan. 27).
The United Kingdom provided Blix with intelligence during his recent visit to the country, according to the London Mirror. The intelligence included information on Iraq’s efforts to hide WMD throughout the country, death threats made by the government to WMD scientists and technicians to prevent them from agreeing to interviews and Iraqi surveillance of inspectors (James Hardy, London Mirror, Jan. 27).
United States Prepares New U.N. Resolution
The U.S. State Department has begun preparing a Security Council resolution to authorize military action against Iraq, according to CNN. The resolution would only be introduced if the Untied States believed it had enough support for its approval and that no veto would be issued, CNN reported.
“We cover all options,” a State official said (CNN.com, Jan. 27).
Inspections
U.N. inspectors have visited at least three suspect Iraqi sites today, according to Reuters. Inspectors visited the al-Amiriya medicine stores located in Baghdad and the al-Samoud missile factory in Taji and conducted a nuclear survey in the Iraqi capital (Reuters/MSNBC.com, Jan. 27).
For further information, see:
UNMOVIC
IAEA Iraq Action Team
U.N. Resolution 1441
By David McGlinchey
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — As long as Iraq is contained and U.N. weapons inspections continue unfettered there is no justification for a U.S.-led invasion, according a report released last week.
“[Iraqi President] Saddam [Hussein] is in an iron box. With tens of thousands of troops around Iraq, an international coalition united in support of the inspection process, and now hundreds of inspectors in the country able to go anywhere at any time, Saddam is unable to engage in any large-scale development or production of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons,” according to Iraq: What’s Next?, a report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
U.N. weapons inspectors have not had enough time to “draw useful conclusions” and need another year to complete inspections, the report says.
The United States has only recently begun sharing significant intelligence with inspectors, who have so far visited fewer than half the sensitive sites noted by previous U.N. inspections regimes.
Frustrated U.N. arms inspectors were withdrawn in 1998 ahead of U.S., French and British bombing. The inspections began in 1991 following the Iraqi defeat in the Gulf War.
This time around, Baghdad has not directly hindered the inspectors’ work, but Iraqi officials have not cooperated either, the report found.
The Iraqi bureaucracy should be able to account for its weapons of mass destructions, and “Iraq must convince the United Nations that it has indeed destroyed all the weapons that it claimed to destroy,” the report says.
However, the report also notes that U.S. President George W. Bush and his administration might not be interested in a peaceful outcome to the inspections. Bush has said on several occasions the United States would force a change of regime in Iraq with or without U.N. support.
“Only if the administration’s true aim is to remove the current government of Iraq as a matter of principle would a turn to war at this moment make sense. If that is the case, of course the inspection and disarmament process now underway is irrelevant,” the report says.
If the Bush administration’s objective is peaceful disarmament of Iraq, then its threat of force is to be commended, the report says (see GSN, Oct. 23, 2002).
However, evidence of banned weapons could be used in different ways by the administration, depending on its final aims.
“If inspections are for the purpose of disarmament, a smoking gun is evidence of progress. If the intent is to remove the current government of Iraq, a smoking gun is a hoped-for reason to gather international support for stopping inspections and turning to war,” the report says.
The United States is contemplating using nuclear weapons in a potential conflict with Iraq, according to reports yesterday (see GSN, Aug. 1, 2002).
Target lists are being reviewed at the U.S. Strategic Command in Nebraska and at the Joint Chiefs of Staff as part of the new U.S. “pre-emption” policy. The nuclear option is being considered to destroy deeply buried Iraqi targets that might be impervious to conventional weapons, according to analyst William Arkin writing in the Los Angeles Times (William Arkin, Los Angeles Times, Jan. 26).
Also yesterday, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card told NBC’s Meet the Press he would not rule out a nuclear option.
“Should Saddam Hussein have any thought that he would use a weapon of mass destruction, he should anticipate that the United States will use whatever means necessary to protect us and the world from a holocaust,” he said.
When asked if “whatever means necessary” includes nuclear weapons, Card said, “I’m not going to put anything on the table or off the table”(Mark Matthews, Baltimore Sun, Jan. 27).
Dan Bartlett, White House communications director, also voiced similar statements Sunday.
“What is clear — and the message that [U.S.] President [George W.] Bush has sent unequivocally — is that if the Iraqi regime, if Saddam Hussein and his generals decide for one second to use weapons of mass destruction against allied forces of the United States of America and our allies, we will make sure it doesn’t happen,” Bartlett told CNN’s Late Edition (Ellen Sorokin, Washington Times, Jan. 27).
Experts from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency have conducted hundreds of inspections in Iraq since resuming the post-Gulf War inspection regime Nov. 27. More than 100 inspectors are now based in the country at two facilities in Baghdad and Mosul. The following chart summarizes some of the inspectors’ reported activities.
| Date | Site | Activity | | Jan. 27 | Al-Amiriya medicine stores | See GSN, Jan. 27. | | | Al-Samoud missile factory in Taji | | | Baghdad area | IAEA inspectors conducted a nuclear survey (see GSN, Jan. 27). | | Jan. 26 | National Project to Control and Combat the Cattle Plague in Baghdad | IAEA release, Jan. 26. | | Chest and Respiratory Diseases Institute in Baghdad | | Al-Basil Center, Nahrawan, in Baghdad | | Karama State Company’s Khadhimiya Plant | UNMOVIC missile inspectors held technical discussions with the leaders of the al-Samoud missile project (IAEA release, Jan. 26). | | Hittin State Establishment | IAEA release, Jan. 26. | | Al-Kut Military Hospital | | Baiji underground refinery located between Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul | | Um al-Maarik industrial machining and foundry facility, south of Baghdad | | Salman Pak area | IAEA inspectors conducted a motorized radiation survey (IAEA release, Jan. 26). | | College of Science at the University of Mosul | IAEA release, Jan. 26 | | College of Education at the University of Mosul | | College of Engineering at the University of Mosul | | Jan. 25 | Al-Mamoun | UNMOVIC missile inspectors met with officials of the al-Rasheed State Company at the site (IAEA release, Jan. 25). | | Sumaykah surface-to-surface missile support facility | IAEA release, Jan. 25. | | College of Veterinary Medicine at Quadisiyah University | | College of Education at Quadisiyah University | | Al-Qa Qaa | UNMOVIC chemical inspectors conducted a rebaseline inspection at the site (IAEA release, Jan. 25). | | Storage area of the North Oil Company | IAEA release, Jan. 25. | | College of Education at Tikrit University in Tikrit | | College of Engineering at Tikrit University in Tikrit | | Vicinity of Baghdad | IAEA inspectors conducted a motorized radiation survey (IAEA release, Jan. 25). | | Jan. 24 | Mamoun Factory | IAEA release, Jan. 24. | | Al-Basil Center in the Jadriyah complex in Baghdad | UNMOVIC chemical Inspectors assessed the site’s current activities (IAEA release, Jan. 24). | | Al-Qa Qaa | See GSN, Jan. 24. | | Jan. 17-23 | See GSN, Jan. 24. | |
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South Korean officials Saturday asked the International Atomic Energy Agency to postpone a meeting — previously scheduled for Feb. 3 — that could have brought the North Korean nuclear crisis to the U.N. Security Council (see GSN, Jan. 24).
The United States indicated it had no objection to the delay.
“There’s not quite the sense of urgency I would have liked to have seen,” said U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. But “it’s not a major problem for us,” he added.
Seoul said Friday it also wanted the United Nations to delay a scheduled Security Council meeting next month on the crisis (Michael Zielensiger, Knight Ridder/Boston Globe, Jan. 27).
North Korea said it welcomed “national cooperation” with Seoul as two South Korean envoys arrived today.
The United States wants to see North Korea abide by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Powell said from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
“The United States is willing to talk to North Korea about how it will meet its obligations to completely dismantle its nuclear weapons program,” Powell said. “Pyongyang’s behavior affects the stability of both the immediate region and the world,” he added (Jae-suk Yoo, Associated Press/Washington Times, Jan. 27).
Seoul’s envoy, Lim Dong-won, arrived in Pyongyang today carrying an appeal from South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, the Voice of America News said. Kim reportedly asked North Korea to immediately abandon its nuclear program.
Lim traveled to Pyongyang to open a dialogue, but he warned a solution would not come quickly (Amy Bickers, VOANews.com, Jan. 27).
Meanwhile, a U.S. Air Force U-2 spy plane crashed yesterday in South Korea, injuring the pilot and four South Koreans on the ground, The New York Times reported.
The United States did not explain the plane’s mission and officials said only that it was conducting “surveillance and reconnaissance” (Don Kirk, The New York Times, Jan. 27).
A U.S. Trident submarine recently test launched cruise missiles from one of its ballistic missile tubes, Navy News Week reported today (see GSN, Dec. 18, 2002).
The USS Florida, one of four Tridents to be converted to a nonstrategic role, launched two Tomahawk cruise missiles off the west coast of Florida to demonstrate the validity of the launch system, slated to pack up to seven cruise missiles in a single Trident missile tube. Each Trident submarine has 24 missile tubes.
“This was a test of the MAC more than anything else,” said program manger Capt. Brian Wegner, referring to the missile canister used in the tests. “We wanted to make sure that in the design of the MAC we mitigated risks associated with a missile firing in close proximity to others,” he said (Navy News Week, Jan. 27).
The U.S. Navy plans to return the USS Florida to service in 2007, after its conversion and refueling (Sonia Barisic, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, Jan. 27).
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World health systems are unprepared to deal with an inevitable biological terrorist attack, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 22).
“There is going to be an attack. Whether it is in Western Europe, the U.S., Africa, Asia or wherever, you have got to anticipate that there is going to be a bioterrorism attack and the only way to defend yourself is by getting prepared,” Thompson said in Davos, Switzerland, site of the World Economic Forum.
In recent years other countries have made great progress preparing for biological terrorism attacks, but they still have much to do, Thompson said in a Financial Times interview (Brian Groom, Financial Times, Jan. 27).
“All I’m suggesting,” he told the Washington Post, “is they should be more vigilant and devote more resources to prepare for a biological attack.” Thompson said that recent chemical terrorism-related arrests in Europe make the problem all the more clear.
The United States has made the most progress in addressing this issue, he added.
“Everybody would have to admit we’re further along than any of the other countries,” he said. A greater allocation of resources has given the United States a head start in this area, he added.
“Ours is a model. I’m not saying ours is the best,” Thompson said. “As a world community we should get better prepared,” he added (Robert McCartney, Washington Post, Jan. 26).
The Bush administration plans to develop a national disease surveillance system, starting in eight major cities, to track suspicious outbreaks that could be the work of bioterrorists, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, Dec. 18, 2002).
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to lead the surveillance system effort. “Our goal is to have a model that any city could pick up and apply,” a senior Bush administration official said.
The system will help detect disease outbreaks by tracking data such as doctors’ reports, emergency room visits and pharmaceutical sales, according to the Times. Such information will help public heath officials and doctors treat a small-scale outbreak sooner and prevent it from growing into an epidemic, officials and experts said.
“We think this will be important,” said Alan Zelicoff, a physician at Sandia National Laboratories, who helped develop the widely used Rapid Syndrome Validation Project. “We need to get disease reporting from the 19th to the 21st century,” he added.
While officials would not say which U.S. cities have been selected for the system, Washington is expected to be one of the eight, according to experts. U.S. President George W. Bush is expected to refer to new U.S. biological terrorism defenses in his State of the Union address tomorrow night, a senior official said.
The plan has raised some privacy concerns, especially because of the U.S. Defense Department’s role in developing disease surveillance systems and because John Poindexter, who leads the Pentagon’s Total Information Awareness computer surveillance system effort, heads the Pentagon agency that finances some disease surveillance research, according to the Times.
Supporters of the planned system, however, have said it would raise few privacy issues because the gathered data will have patients’ names and personal information removed. Instead, patients will be tracked by their symptoms and other factors, such as age, sex and postal ZIP code, they said.
The new system will directly deal with privacy concerns, Bush administration officials said. “We have to satisfy the legal constraints, and also people’s concerns,” a senior official said (Broad/Miller, New York Times, Jan. 27).
The FBI began a second round of searches near Frederick, Md., Friday related to the autumn 2001 anthrax attacks which killed five people, according to the Baltimore Sun (see GSN, Dec. 19, 2002).
“The FBI is conducting forensic searches on public land located within the City of Frederick, Maryland. These searches are related to the FBI’s investigation of the origin of the anthrax-laced letters mailed in September and October 2001,” according to an FBI statement.
The new search of a remote section of woods is connected with former U.S. Army biologist Steven Hatfill, who has been “a person of interest” in the bureau’s investigation, a law enforcement source said (see GSN, Jan. 10; Scott Shane, Baltimore Sun, Jan. 25). Hatfill worked at the army’s nearby Fort Detrick biological defense laboratory from 1997 to 1999.
An initial search of the area last month yielded some materials that were being tested for connections to the anthrax attacks, law enforcement officials said (Allen Lengel, Washington Post, Jan. 25).
Hatfill’s spokesman, Patrick Clawson, criticized the FBI’s intense focus on Hatfill.
“(The) bottom line is, it’s unfortunate the grown-ups aren’t in charge at the FBI. Because they would realize ... Steven Hatfill had nothing to do with the anthrax attacks, period,” Clawson said. “Somebody needs to seriously ask (Attorney General) John Ashcroft and (FBI Director) Bob Mueller ... why this is continuing when Steve Hatfill has cooperated 100 percent with the FBI from day one. The surveillance of him continues 24/7” (Lengel, Washington Post).
Frederick Police Chief Kim Dine said the new search focused on a more remote section of woods. The FBI has imposed flight restrictions over the area to prevent the media from obtaining aerial photographs, officials said (Shane, Baltimore Sun).
For further information, see:
CDC Frequently Asked Questions About Anthrax
FBI Amerithrax Investigation
Journal of the American Medical Association Background on Anthrax
GSN Anthrax Attack Chronology (Dec. 12, 2001)
U.S. President George W. Bush’s national civilian smallpox immunization plan began Friday with the inoculation of four Connecticut doctors, a much smaller number than state health officials had expected, the Washington Post reported (see GSN, Jan. 23).
Connecticut officials had been ready to vaccinate 20 volunteers but participants stayed away because of concerns about the vaccine’s side effects and the potential lack of compensation for those sickened by the shots, the Post reported.
“There’s not been a case of smallpox; we’re not yet at war with Iraq. People’s concerns are reasonable,” said Michael Grey, coordinator of the team that is being initially vaccinated. “We’re ready to adjust to that,” he said (Ferdinand/Connolly, Washington Post, Jan. 25).
Despite early opposition from health care worker organizations, Connecticut announced suddenly that vaccinations would take place Jan. 24, according to Jean Morningstar, president of University Health Professionals, which represents 1,800 medical personnel at the University of Connecticut’s Health Center.
State officials “rushed through this program before our questions were answered,” she said (Donald McNeil, New York Times, Jan. 25).
Other states also expect their turnout to be lower when vaccinations begin. Alabama at first planned to immunize 12,000 volunteers in the first phase of the program, according to the Post.
“It’s going to be much lower,” said Donald Williamson, a state health official. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see it in the 2,000 to 5,000 range,” he added.
Concerns persisted nationwide about the smallpox immunization program and its potential side effects.
“We have a bigger threat with drug-resistant tuberculosis today than we do from smallpox,” said Kay McVay, president of the 50,000-member California Nurses Association. “I’m wondering if this is not a little play to create some hysteria about the prospects of this horrendous disease and war,” she added.
Wary hospital workers and officials also cited concerns about compensation, the Post reported.
“I have an obligation to take care of my employees, and I have a problem possibly injuring a person who would not be compensated and whose family wouldn’t be compensated,” said Elizabeth MacNeill, chief medical officer of Pima County in Arizona. “Even though the risk is very small, it’s unconscionable to take that risk with our valuable employees,” she added.
As of Saturday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had shipped more than 29,000 smallpox vaccine doses to seven states and Los Angeles for civilian use.
Los Angeles County received 9,200 doses, more than any state, according to the Post. The CDC sent 6,400 doses to Connecticut (Ferdinand/Connolly, Washington Post).
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Law enforcement and intelligence forces across Europe have broken up an alleged terrorist ring that was planning an imminent wave of chemical attacks, according to Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar (Sharrock/McGrory, London Times, Jan. 25).
It was reported last week that North African terrorism suspects recently arrested in the United Kingdom might have been planning to poison a British military base’s food supply with ricin (see GSN, Jan. 24).
Referring to Spanish arrests Friday of 16 suspected al-Qaeda operatives (see GSN, Jan. 24), Aznar said, “Police have broken up a major terrorist network … linked in this case to the criminal organization of [al-Qaeda leader Osama] bin Laden,” the Washington Post reported.
“The network had connections with terrorists recently arrested in France and the United Kingdom, and they were preparing attacks with explosives and chemical materials,” he added (see GSN, Dec. 30, 2002; Peter Finn, Washington Post, Jan. 25).
Police arrested five Moroccans in northern Italy Thursday, the London Times reported Saturday.
“I am very pleased that in the catches in Italy and Spain that they have been able to get the arrests,” said British Home Secretary David Blunkett. “We’ll learn from it very quickly and obviously, we will take whatever steps are necessary to protect ourselves in the U.K.” (Sharrock/McGrory, London Times, Jan. 25).
Chemical Suits Discovered
British authorities discovered chemical protection suits during a recent raid on a north London mosque, Australia’s Adelaide Advertiser reported.
Detectives kept the discovery secret amid fears that the disclosure would incite panic, according to the Advertiser.
Police are conducting tests to determine if there are any chemical traces on the suits, detectives said (Adelaide Advertiser, Jan. 27).
An Islamic militant group based in Trinidad has threatened chemical attacks against U.S. and British interests in the country in the event of a war with Iraq, the Trinidad Express reported yesterday.
“With our weapons we are going reach you. We will reach you where you sleep, we will reach you where you take your baths, we will reach you where you take your meals and have your drinks, even a glass of water you hold in your hand to drink may not be safe,” said a statement from the group, which describes itself as “a revolutionary ideological movement.”
Two Express staff members were taken to a secret location operated by the group, measuring about 15 feet by 15 feet and located underground, according to the Express. The location housed a number of chemicals in both liquid and powder forms. A man at the location, who said he was qualified as a chemical engineer, described some of the materials, which included potash, borax, heavy metal pellets and sulphate of heavy metal pellets, the Express reported. The heavy metal pellets, described as cobalt, could be combined with other chemicals to make a number of fatal toxins, the man said.
“Once you know your way around the chemical industry it is easy to source these chemicals. In fact, nearly all of what we use can be found in domestic or industrial use. The key to the operation is connectivity,” the man said.
The group said it had been producing and storing chemical weapons for the past two years. There are several additional laboratories currently in operation, which have produced and stored weapons, the group said.
The Trinidadian customs agency has no special method for tracking or verifying chemical imports, an official said.
“Anybody can import anything to use for any purpose and the customs is helpless,” the official said. “And we don’t pay much attention to many chemicals because there are no duties attached,” the official added (Darryl Heerlal, Trinidad Express, Jan. 26).
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Bahrain has deployed Patriot missile interceptor batteries as a defense from any potential missile threat, Bahraini King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa said Saturday (see GSN, Jan. 21).
The Patriots “would bolster the Bahrain Defense Force capabilities to defend the nation with competence and efficiency,” Khalifa told the Royal Field Artillery Unit.
All necessary measures have been enacted to defend Bahrain in the event of a U.S.-led war on Iraq, Bahraini Defense Minister Gen. Sheikh Khalifa bin Ahmed al-Khalifa recently said (Mohammed Almezel, Gulf News, Jan. 27). During the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq launched two Scud ballistic missiles into Bahrain, where the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet is based (Adnan Malik, Associated Press/Miami Herald, Jan. 26).
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2002 by National Journal Group, Inc. The material in this section is produced independently for NTI by National Journal Group, Inc. Any reproduction or retransmission, in whole or in part, is a violation of federal law and is strictly prohibited without the consent of the National Journal Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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