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U.S. Developing Internationally Banned Bio, Chemical Weapons: Report
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U.S.
argued the research was being done for defensive purposes, but
their legality under the BWC is questionable
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LONDON,
October 29 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - British and American
academics have warned that the U.S. is developing a new generation of
weapons that possibly violate international treaties on biological and
chemical warfare, a U.K. daily newspaper reported Tuesday, October 29.
The
left-wing British daily, the Guardian, pointed out that
the claims come at a time when the U.S. is proposing military action
against Iraq on the grounds that President Saddam Hussein is breaking
international agreements on weapons of mass destruction.
The
Guardian said that according to specialists in
bio-warfare and chemical weapons, the Pentagon, with the help of the
British military, is also working on "non-lethal" weapons
similar to the gas used by Russian forces to end last week's theater
siege in Moscow.
The
newspaper said Malcolm Dando, professor of international security at the
University of Bradford, northern England, and Mark Wheelis, a lecturer
in microbiology at the University of California, were worried that the
U.S. is encouraging a breakdown in arms control by its research.
Dando
said that U.S. work includes CIA efforts to copy a Soviet cluster bomb
designed to disperse biological weapons, and a project by the Pentagon
to build a bio-weapon plant from commercially available materials to
prove that terrorists could do the same thing.
Dando
told the Guardian that there was also research
underway by the Defense Intelligence Agency into the possibility of
genetically engineering a new strain of antibiotic-resistant anthrax.
There
was also a program to produce dried anthrax spores, officially for
testing U.S. bio-defenses, the academic said, but far more spores were
allegedly produced than necessary for such purposes and it is unclear
whether they have been destroyed or simply stored.
"There
can be disagreement over whether what the United States is doing
represents violations of treaties," Wheelis told the Guardian.
"But what is happening is at least so close to the borderline as to
be destabilizing."
In
a paper to be published soon in the scientific journal Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists, the two academics focus on recent U.S. actions that
have served to undermine the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC),
the paper said.
Last
July, the U.S. blocked an attempt to give the convention some teeth with
inspections, so that member countries could check if others were keeping
the agreement, the Guardian reported.
According
to Dando, Washington's motive for torpedoing the deal, which had the
support of its allies, was to maintain secrecy over U.S. research work
on biological weapons, the paper said, adding that the U.S. argued the
research work was being done for defensive purposes, but their legality
under the BWC is questionable.
For
example, a clause in the biological weapons treaty forbids signatories
from producing or developing "weapons, equipment or means of
delivery designed to use such agents or toxins for hostile purposes or
in armed conflict", according to the paper.
Furthermore,
signatories agreed to make annual declarations about their bio-defense
program, but the U.S. never mentioned any of those program in its
reports. Instead, they emerged from leaks and press reporting, the paper
said.
It
also noted the irony of the scientists' report surfacing at a time when
the Bush administration is locked in negotiations at the U.N. for a
tough resolution on arms inspections of Iraq.
According
to Dando, British and U.S. research into hallucinogenic weapons such as
the gas BZ encouraged Iraq to look into similar agents. "We showed
them the way," he said, reported the Guardian.
Dando
added that the U.S. was currently working on "non-lethal"
weapons similar to the gas Russian forces used to break the Moscow
theater siege. Those include "calmative" agent which are
designed to knock people out without killing them, the paper said.
Dando
predicted that what happened in Moscow is a "harbinger of what is
to come."
"There
is a revolution in life sciences which could be applied in a major way
to warfare. It's an early example of the mess we may be creating,"
he said, the Guardian reported
He
added that Britain "is implicated as well", as the Pentagon's
Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate has worked with British officers on
its research, the paper said.
On
Sunday, October 27, the White
House declined
to criticize Russia for using gas to end a hostage standoff at a Moscow
theater, even though 115 of the 800 captives died after exposure to the
substance, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
U.S.
President George W. Bush's chief spokesman, Ari Fleischer, placed the
blame for the deaths on the Chechen hostage-takers, who had demanded an
end to Moscow's bloody campaign against their people.
"This
is a tragedy. The Russian government and the Russian people were victims
of this tragedy," he told reporters as Bush left an Asia-Pacific
forum in Mexico for a series of political rallies on Sunday and Monday,
October 27-28.
"Everyone
wants to save as many lives as possible. It's the hostage-takers who put
people in harm's way to begin with," the spokesman said, according
to AFP.
Earlier,
Russian health officials admitted that the gas used in the special
forces operation against Chechen hostage-takers was to blame for the
deaths and for serious injuries to dozens more of the captives.
"The
president abhors the loss of all life," said Fleischer, who refused
to criticize the Russian authorities.
"We
don't know all the facts and all the circumstances, so I'm not going to
venture into that," he said, adding that Bush has yet to telephone
Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss the end to the crisis.
Meanwhile,
South Korea's Intelligence Agency Chief, Shin Kun, said Monday in a
testimony to the parliament's Intelligence Committee that North Korea
possesses some 4,000 tons of biochemical weapons and has built as many as
three crude nuclear weapons.
North
Korea was capable of producing some 4,500
tons of weapons annually, he said.
Pyongyang
began its biochemical weapons program about forty years ago.
"The
North is believed to have a stockpile of between 2,500-4,000
tons of biochemical weapons," an opposition Grand National Party
(GNP) lawmaker, Lee Yoon-Sung, quoted Shin as saying Tuesday.
"We
are unable to judge how powerful those biochemical weapons are as we
have yet to confirm the accuracy of their delivery systems and whether
the North has made those weapons compact enough to deliver."
Echoing
what U.S. officials have said of the North's nuclear development
program, Shin said Pyongyang could already own as many as three crude
nuclear weapons.
The
weapons would have been built using some seven to 22 kilograms (15 to 49
pounds) of plutonium the North is believed to have extracted before it
opened nuclear facilities to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
inspections in 1992.
"We
don't have any information on how much enriched uranium the North might
have. South Korea and the United States have been closely following this
program," he said.
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