Threat Assessment:  Chemical Tankers Face Piracy in Southeast Asia

Ten armed men seized a chemical tanker in the Strait of Malacca yesterday, but released the crew unharmed and the ship undamaged after robbing communications equipment and personal effects, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, Dec. 16, 2002).

Two other chemical tankers have been attacked in the last month and while none of these assaults appears to be related to terrorism, officials remain concerned about the vulnerability of hazardous cargoes as the United States invades Iraq.

“Chemical tankers are very dangerous,” said Noel Choong, the chief of the International Maritime Bureau Piracy Reporting Center in Kuala Lumpur.  If such a ship spills its contents “it’s not easy to contain if the vapor is poisonous,” he added.

Owners of chemical tankers do not always know what their cargo will be, and are sometimes surprised when chemicals are loaded onto a ship by workers in hazardous material suits protected by police escorts, according to Arthur Bowring, managing director of the Hong Kong Shipowners Association.

One-quarter of the world’s sea trade passes through the Strait of Malacca and pirates in small, hard-to-detect boats are not uncommon, the Times reported.  From September to January eight tugboats towing barges were hijacked and only one tugboat and two barges have been recovered.

Since the beginning of hostilities in Iraq, Singapore has increased its maritime security, partly by requiring six hours advance notice from tugboats maneuvering in the port.  A Malaysian marine police official said that his force was not increasing patrols but had taken other measures (Keith Bradsher, New York Times, March 27).

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Iraq:  Bush and Blair Meet at Camp David War Summit

U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair met today at Camp David to discuss the war with Iraq and to begin planning for Iraqi reconstruction (see GSN, March 26).

After receiving a briefing on the latest military situation in Iraq, Blair said he was “confident that the goals that we have set ourselves will be met.”

Blair also played down speculation that the war could take longer than had been originally expected, noting the large amount of progress that has been made in just one week.  He raised as examples the proximity of U.S. and British forces to Baghdad, the securing of Iraqi oil fields in the southern part of the country and the opening of a second front in the north.

“Because of the way it’s reported — you’ve got this constant 24-hours-a-day media, it may seem to people that it’s a lot longer than just under a week.  But actually, it’s just under a week.  And in just under a week, there is a massive amount that has already been achieved,” Blair said.

“There is absolutely no point, in my view, of trying to set a time limit [for the end of hostilities] or speculate on it, because it’s not set by time.  It’s set by the nature of the job,” Blair said.

In the end, the war will last “however long it takes to achieve our objective,” Bush told reporters, “That’s important for you to know, the American people to know, our allies to know and the Iraqi people to know.”

Bush also said that the United States was prepared to respond to any possible Iraqi WMD attacks, and if Iraqi President Saddam Hussein chose to do so, it would only reinforce the U.S. decision to make war.

“If he uses weapons of mass destruction, it will just prove our case,” Bush said.  “And we will deal with it.  We’ve got one objective in mind, that’s victory,” he said.

During today’s meeting, Bush and Blair also discussed plans for rebuilding Iraq once the war is over.  They both urged the United Nations to immediately resume the oil-for-food program to help relieve the growing humanitarian crisis.

“This urgent humanitarian issue must not be politicized,” Bush said.

Blair said he and Bush would try to obtain new U.N. Security Council resolutions to affirm Iraq’s territorial integrity, to ensure rapid humanitarian aid following the overthrow of Hussein and to endorse “an appropriate post-conflict administration for Iraq” (Mike Nartker, Global Security Newswire, March 27).

War Could Drag On for Months, U.S. Officers Say

Some senior U.S. military officers now believe that the war in Iraq will probably last for months and will require larger numbers of troops and materials than are now available in the region, senior U.S. defense officials said yesterday.

Poor weather, long and vulnerable supply lines and a resistant enemy have prompted U.S. generals to reassess expectations and timelines for the war, according to the Washington Post.  Both at the front and at the Pentagon, commanders talked yesterday about a longer, and more difficult fight, than had been recently expected, the officials said.

Even though some top military planners continue to support a drive toward Baghdad, many U.S. Army commanders have welcomed a pause that began yesterday, the Post reported.  U.S. forces are stretched out across more than 300 miles and many of the Army’s Apache helicopters have been unable to fly because of poor weather or battle damage.  In addition, a U.S. Marine advance on the Iraqi city of Kut has also been stalled because of fuel shortages and skirmishes along supply lines, according to the Post. 

U.S. Defense Department spokesmen, however, have said the war is still proceeding according to plan.

“The plan has moved almost exactly with expectations,” Army Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal said yesterday.  “Fast where we expected it to be fast, gathering strength where we expected to do that.  So the answer is, it’s right on the mark,” he added

Meanwhile, the United States has begun to move additional forces to Iraq, according to the Post.  The Army’s 4th Infantry Division has begun to unload equipment in Kuwait, but it is expected to take the division almost a month to get into position.  Other units heading to the conflict, such as the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and the 1st Cavalry Division, will need months to move their tanks and other combat vehicles into combat, the defense officials said (Thomas Ricks, Washington Post, March 27).

U.S. paratroopers yesterday dropped onto an airfield in northern Iraq, which may pave the way for the opening of a second front, according to the Associated Press.  About 1,000 paratroopers from the Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade began securing the airfield today to prepare it for the arrival of additional troops and material (David Crary, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, March 27).

The airfield was apparently captured to allow for the landing of armored forces from the Army’s 1st Division, according to the Financial Times.  The deployment of elements from that division in northern Iraq would give U.S. military planners the ability to attack the city of Tikrit, a stronghold of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, from the north (Spiegel/Nicholson, Financial Times, March 27).

In an apparent counterattack attempt, Iraq yesterday began moving two large Republican Guard contingents to the southern cities of Nasiriya and Najaf, according to the London Independent.  An unknown umber of U.S. tanks and armored vehicles were destroyed yesterday in attack by makeshift Iraq vehicles at the town of Abu Sukhayr, near Najaf (Macintyre/Lichfield, London Independent, March 27).

In southern Iraq, British forces last night destroyed 14 Iraqi tanks that had attempted to leave the city of Basra, according to a British spokesman (Crary, Associated Press).

Scud Hunt Continues

More than 10,000 U.S. special operations forces are currently operating within Iraq, according to the Boston Globe.  Operating in teams of less than 12 men, they are conducting a number of missions, including searching for Scud ballistic missile launchers and Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, attacking Iraqi leadership targets in Baghdad and combating an Islamic militant group suspected of ties to al-Qaeda, the Globe reported (see related GSN story, today).

“This is the largest deployment of (special operations forces) in history,” a U.S. official said (Bryan Bender, Boston Globe, March 27).

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U.S.-Russia:  Russia Will Continue to Limit Access to Nuclear Sites, Rumyantsev Says

Russia will continue to block international access to some of its nuclear sites, Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev said yesterday, citing national security reasons (see GSN, March 24).

Restricted access to sites containing Russian nuclear materials has delayed the installation of improved security measures, a recent U.S. congressional report said.  Rumyantsev, however, said some sites would continue to be off-limits, noting that Russia has already provided levels of access that would have been unknown during the Soviet era.

“As for access by representatives of other countries to our sites where nuclear materials are located, we will not show all sites.  And where the arrangement of these installations [is] confidential, we will not display them for international observation,” Rumyantsev said.  “It is a question linked to our defensive capability,” he added (Associated Press/Moscow Times, March 27).

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Russia:  Strategic Missile Forces Test ICBM

Russia flight-tested an 18-year-old SS-25 ICBM today from the northwestern base Plesetsk, Agence France-Presse reported.

Officials fired the long-range missile, also known as the Topol, at the Kamchatka Peninsula, but said the test had nothing to do with Russian unhappiness over the U.S.-led attack on Iraq.

“This has nothing to do with it.  It has nothing to do with Iraq,” said a Russian Strategic Missile Forces officer.  “This has been in the planning for months,” the officer added (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, March 27).

The missile was launched from a mobile unit, the Associated Press reported today (Associated Press, March 27).

The Topol hit the target in Kamchatka with “designed accuracy,” according to the Russian Strategic Missile Forces (ITAR-Tass, March 27).

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U.S. Response:  California to Maintain Botulism Antitoxin Program

California Governor Gray Davis has decided to preserve a state program that is developing a botulism antitoxin safe for use in infants, who make up 75 percent of botulism cases each year, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, March 25).

Because of budget deficits, Davis had proposed removing the $1.5 million program from next year’s state budget, according to the Associated Press.  While Davis has decided to save the program, he has not yet decided the level of funding he will propose for it for fiscal 2004, spokeswoman Hillary McLean said yesterday.

“Research has never ceased or slowed down,” McLean said.  “Funding is going to be preserved,” she added (Paul Elias, Associated Press/San Jose Mercury News, March 27).

For further information, see:

Journal of the American Medical Association Background on Botulinum Toxin

CDC Basic Information About Botulism

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Smallpox:  CDC Investigates Post-Vaccination Heart Problems

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has convened its vaccine advisory committee and assembled a team of cardiologists to review the cases of seven smallpox immunization volunteers who suffered heart problems, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, March 26).

The vaccine has not been linked to heart problems, but a 56-year-old woman died after a heart attack Sunday — five days after taking the vaccine — and an unidentified immunized woman is on life support after suffering a heart attack.  Five others have suffered lesser cardiac ailments and 10 members of the U.S. military’s 350,000 immunized personnel have experienced heart problems.

“My gut feeling is they are probably coincidental,” said Walter Orenstein, director of the CDC’s National Immunization Program.  “We want to err on the side of caution and investigate further,” he added.

While the investigation begins, the CDC is warning volunteers with heart disease to delay getting immunized.

“That’s nice if you know you have heart disease,” said Richard Wenzel, chief of internal medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center in Richmond.  “It doesn’t help if you don’t know,” he added.

Meanwhile, Service Employees International Union President Andrew Stern expressed concerns over the vaccine.

“The grave dangers associated with the smallpox vaccine may no longer be a remote possibility for seven American civilians … We expect full disclosure of the conclusive evidence before another frontline worker is put at unnecessary risk, before another family faces indescribable grief,” he said in a letter to U.S. President George W. Bush.

Lawmakers, meanwhile, argued over Bush’s proposed compensation for workers sickened by the vaccine.  The White House has put forward a plan to pay $262,000 in death or permanent disability awards and up to $50,000 for lost wages.

“I am deeply disappointed that the compensation scheme the administration has proposed is so inadequate and unfair that it may not jump-start this faltering program,” Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) said (Ceci Connolly, Washington Post, March 27).

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Anthrax:  Scientists Learning Which Bacteria Strains Are More Deadly

Scientists have learned more about what makes one strain of anthrax more virulent than another — information that could be used to make anthrax more dangerous or to help produce a more effective vaccine, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, March 26).

Researchers at the Louisiana State University, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases have found that each strain carries multiple sets of plasmids — which carry genes in addition to the bacterium’s large chromosome, according to the Times (see GSN, May 10, 2002).  While it was previously believed that anthrax only contained one set of plasmids, the researchers discovered that each bacterium contains up to 243 copies of the first plasmid and up to 32 copies of the second, known as pX02. 

The presence of more copies of pX02 in an anthrax bacterium correlates to an increase in that strain’s virulence, the researchers said in their study, published in the current Journal of Clinical Microbiology.  Subtle features of the anthrax’s DNA chromosome also appear to have an effect on virulence, they said.

The study could help the genetic engineering of more deadly anthrax by increasing the number of pX02 plasmids, Pamala Coker of Lawrence Livermore, the study’s lead researcher, said.  Martin Hugh-Jones, a member of the research team at LSU, said the study could also help explain why some anthrax vaccines are more effective than others.

“This will allow us to do some very impressive things in coming on with new vaccines,” he said (William Broad, New York Times, March 27).

For further information, see:

CDC Frequently Asked Questions About Anthrax

Journal of the American Medical Association Background on Anthrax

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Iraq:  No Chemical Weapons Found at Captured Najaf Site

U.S. troops have so far found no chemical or biological weapons at a captured ammunition storage site near the Iraqi town of Najaf, which was initially suspected of being a chemical weapons plant, weapons experts and military officers said yesterday (see GSN, March 26).

The site remains suspicious, however, because of indications that chemical or biological weapons might once have been stored at the site, officials said.  For example, an Iraqi general who was captured when U.S. troops took control of the site has told military intelligence analysts that there were special bunkers and underground tunnels at the facility that he and other senior staff were not allowed to enter, they said.

A U.S. military site survey team inspecting the facility has also found a biological hazard sign with a crate in one bunker at the site and found crate markings in another bunker indicating “CN-1,” which is sometimes used to identify riot control agents, according to the New York Times.  The team also found wax on the surface of artillery shell discovered at the site, a substance sometimes used on chemical munitions, the Times reported.

Weapons experts still have not reached a final conclusion as to whether biological or chemical weapons were ever stored at the site.

“We have never conducted a systematic hunt for weapons of mass destruction in a combat situation on such a large scale,” said a weapons expert who has studied the reports filed by the site survey team working at the Najaf site.  “We’re still feeling our way,” the expert said (Judith Miller, New York Times, March 27).

Other weapons experts, acting on intelligence tips, also found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in ammunition dumps near the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr, the Washington Post reported (Joby Warrick, Washington Post, March 27).

Some experts have said U.S. forces will have difficulty uncovering Iraqi chemical weapons sites, in part, because chemical shells often resemble conventional munitions.  For example, during the 1991 Gulf War, U.S. troops destroyed an Iraqi ammunition dump, only to learn later that chemical shells had been mixed with the conventional ones stored there, said retired Brig. Gen. Walt Busbee.

“Looking at an area that’s the size of California and a terrain that’s readily disposed to hiding stuff, I’m not surprised at all that they haven’t found anything,” Busbee said (Christopher Cooper, Wall Street Journal, March 27).

U.S. weapons experts scouring Iraq for hidden stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons, however, have a number of high-tech tools at their disposal, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

One such device is an ion mobility spectrometer — a battery-powered device about the size of a portable radio, said Ivan Oelrich of the Federation of American Scientists.  The device uses a small air pump to suck in air, which flows over an electric field that measures the mass of different impurities.  If the masses match those of known chemical weapons agents, it can set off an alarm.  If Iraq used unknown agents to produce chemical weapons, however, then the device would probably not work, Oelrich said.

In addition, experts searching a specific site could use handheld devices known as “smart tickets” to test for biological agents, said Calvin Chue of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Civilian Biodefense.  The device uses an anthrax antibody to determine if the bacterium is present by analyzing material on a swab, he said (Faye Flam, Philadelphia Inquirer, March 27).

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Threat Assessment:  FBI Warns of Crude Chemical Attacks

The FBI warned U.S. law enforcement agencies yesterday that terrorists could use readily available materials to manufacture crude chemical weapons (see GSN, Dec. 30, 2002).

Toxic substances, such as hydrogen cyanide or chlorine gas, could be produced by combining liquid and solid materials, the FBI said in its weekly intelligence bulletin.  Terrorists could make a crude device to combine such materials through the use of a pierced paint can and a blasting cap or time-delay switch, the bureau said.

“When combined, this creates the toxic gas that would emerge through the holes,” the FBI said.  “Little or no training is required to assemble and deploy such a device due to its simplicity,” it added.

While the FBI alert did not provide any information on a specific threat, it did warn that terrorists could use a building’s ventilation system, air intakes or other enclosed areas to conduct chemical attacks (see GSN, May 14, 2002).  A crude chemical weapon would be most effective in these areas, because the toxic substances would be dispersed too quickly in larger areas or outside to have much effect, the bulletin said (Curt Anderson, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, March 27).

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United States:  Patriots Intercept Incoming Iraqi Missile

A U.S. Patriot missile battery successfully destroyed at least one Iraqi ballistic missile fired into Kuwait today, according to a Kuwaiti military spokesman (see GSN, March 25).  The missile was intercepted “outside residential areas” the spokesman said (Associated Press/Online.Ie, March 27).

Meanwhile, two NATO-supplied Patriot batteries have arrived in Turkey, bringing the total deployed there to five, the alliance said today (see GSN, Jan. 30).  The two new batteries, which are expected to be operational within a few days, were provided by the United States and will be operated by U.S. crews (Agence France-Presse, March 27).

For further information, see:

PAC-3 Fact Sheet

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