November 20, 2001	Tuesday	Ramazan 4, 1422

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GENEVA, Nov 19: The United States on Monday accused Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya and North Korea of developing or being ready to develop biological weapons in a violation of an international ban on germ warfare.

US Undersecretary of State John Bolton told a conference in Geneva on the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) that “Iraq’s biological weapons programmeme remains a serious threat to international security”.

“The US strongly suspects that Iraq has taken advantage of three years of no UN inspections to improve all phases of its offensive BW (biological weapons) programmeme,” Bolton said.

The United States also singled out North Korea for developing and producing germ warfare agents.

“North Korea likely has the capability to produce sufficient quantities of biological agents for military purposes within weeks of a decision to do so,” Bolton told officials from the 144 countries that have signed the BWC.

He did not give a source for his claims.

Bolton said he was also “quite concerned about Iran”, as well as research and development on germ warfare in Libya and Syria.

“Finally, we are concerned about the growing interest of Sudan — a non-BWC party — in developing a biological weapons programmeme,” he added.

While he said that “the existence of Iraq’s programmeme is beyond dispute”, Bolton did not directly say that Iraq had biological weapons.

He said that North Korea “may have weaponized”, while Iraq had “probably produced and weaponized biological weapons agents”, while the other countries mentioned were believed to be at the stage of research and development.

Bolton later told journalists that the United States also had other countries on its list which he declined to name publicly because it would not be in US foreign policy interests.

“We will be contacting them privately,” he added.

Bolton said Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda network remained Washington’s top concern.

“While we do not yet know the source of the recent anthrax attacks against us, we do know that some of the Sept 11 terrorists made inquiries into renting crop dusters, almost certainly to attack our cities,” Bolton added.

He said the United States was concerned that Osama may have been “trying to acquire a rudimentary biological weapons capability, possibly with support from a state”.

“While the US is not prepared at this time to comment on whether rogue states may have assisted a possible Al Qaeda biological weapons programmeme, rest assured that the US will not rely alone on treaties or international organisations to deal with such terrorist groups or the states that support them,” Bolton continued. Bolton’s remarks came at the beginning of the review conference on the 1972 biological weapons convention, which bans the production, use and stockpiling of biological weapons.

Governments taking part in the convention, which has been ratified by 144 countries, are due to review the treaty’s effectiveness over the next three weeks.

The US undersecretary of state also formally presented to the conference a series of proposals first unveiled by US President George W. Bush on Nov 1, which Bolton said could strengthen the BWC immediately to meet new threats, such as bio-terrorism.

He emphasized the need for more action beyond traditional arms control measures, including tighter export controls on biological material from laboratories, better national controls, enhanced defence measures, and surveillance and assistance to tackle outbreaks of disease.

The US is also urging other countries to introduce laws allowing the criminal prosecution of anyone who produces germ warfare agents.

“We believe that national criminal legislation would be more effective rather than slug through seven more years of BWC negotiations,” Bolton said. Bolton appealed for the US proposals to be endorsed in the final declaration of the conference, which ends on Dec 7.—AFP