WASHINGTON, Oct 27: The US State Department has halted its mail service to foreign diplomatic posts, and is screening its buildings for anthrax after a man handling its post was infected with the disease, officials said on Friday.

The man contracted inhalation anthrax, becoming the latest casualty in a widening bio-terror scare, while handling State Department mail at a facility in Sterling, Virginia.

Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the man, whose diagnosis was confirmed on Thursday, was in a “guarded but stable condition” at a Virginia hospital.

A second mail worker, whose condition had caused concern, had tested negative for anthrax but was being treated with antibiotics as a precaution, Boucher said.

In response to the discovery of anthrax at the mail facility, the delivery of all State Department external mail, known as the ‘pouch’ system, had been halted, he added.

“The State Department pouch system, mail system, is essentially shut down.

“Some of the pouches that might have gone from this (facility) to overseas posts, the posts have been instructed not to open them,” Boucher said.

The department’s classified, diplomatic baggage courier system was not affected by the measures, and Boucher said that as most urgent business was conducted by telegram and e-mail, communications between Washington and foreign posts were intact.

Collegues of the sick man at the Sterling, Virginia facility are being offered a 60-day course of antibiotics, while all State Department mail workers are taking a 10-day precautionary dose.

“We’ve instructed our overseas posts to give Cipro to their employees who handle the bulk mail,” Boucher said.

The Sterling facility has been closed, along with five or six locations in the State Department and up to seven external posts which handle departmental mail.

Testing for anthrax is being done in the air conditioning system in the vast State Department building in downtown Washington, Boucher said.

“Obviously, depending on the results of those tests, we may take further action,” Boucher said.

Officials do not yet know how the anthrax was able to infiltrate the Sterling facility, but said that mail there is sometimes passed on from Washington’s Brentwood sorting office, where an anthrax-tainted letter to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle was processed.

Boucher declined to say if Secretary of State Colin Powell had been tested for anthrax exposure, or had been offered precautionary antibiotics.

“I would say we would have no reason to believe that he would have been exposed,” he said.—AFP