USAF COUNTERPROLIFERATION CENTER

CPC OUTREACH JOURNAL

Maxwell AFB, Alabama

Issue No. 416, 15 March 2005

Articles & Other Documents:

Rice Plans No Apology To North Korea APG Completes Neutralization Of Stockpiled Mustard Agent Saddam's $2m Offer To WMD Inspector Ex-US Diplomat Urges Separation Of Human Rights From Nuke Issue NK's Taepodong Missiles Could Be Operational By Looting At Iraqi Weapons Plants Was Systematic, 2015: LaPorte Official Says The Deal To Disarm Kadafi US Is Urged To Back 2 Nuclear Treaties On Asia Trip, Rice To Nudge Allies On N. Korea Iran Rebuffs US Over Nuclear Plans Egypt Aided Iraq's 1980s Weapons Program, CIA Group Va. Defense Facility Locked Down Says Bush Seeks to Ban Some Nations From All Nuclear Anthrax alarm closes three mail facilities Technology

Welcome to the CPC Outreach Journal. As part of USAF Counterproliferation Center’s mission to counter weapons of mass destruction through education and research, we’re providing our government and civilian community a source for timely counterproliferation information. This information includes articles, papers and other documents addressing issues pertinent to US military response options for dealing with nuclear, biological and chemical threats and attacks. It’s our hope this information resource will help enhance your counterproliferation issue awareness. Established in 1998, the USAF/CPC provides education and research to present and future leaders of the Air Force, as well as to members of other branches of the armed services and Department of Defense. Our purpose is to help those agencies better prepare to counter the threat from weapons of mass destruction. Please feel free to visit our web site at www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/awc-cps.htm for in-depth information and specific points of contact. Please direct any questions or comments on CPC Outreach Journal Jo Ann Eddy, CPC Outreach Editor, at (334) 953- 7538 or DSN 493-7538. To subscribe, change e-mail address, or unsubscribe to this journal or to request inclusion on the mailing list for CPC publications, please contact Mrs. Eddy. The following articles, papers or documents do not necessarily reflect official endorsement of the United States Air Force, Department of Defense, or other US government agencies. Reproduction for private use or commercial gain is subject to original copyright restrictions. All rights are reserved

Washington Times March 12, 2005 Pg. 1 Rice Plans No Apology To North Korea By Nicholas Kralev, The Washington Times Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday she won't apologize to North Korea for calling it an "outpost of tyranny" and she ruled out incentives for the North to abandon its nuclear weapons program like those being offered to Iran. "You would want to be careful with the North Koreans on front-loading incentives, because we know that story, we know how that worked out last time," Miss Rice said, referring to a 1994 nuclear deal Pyongyang made with the Clinton administration. "They took the carrots and ... started breaking their obligations," she told editors and reporters in an hour-long interview at The Washington Times. This was her first newspaper interview since taking office six weeks ago. On North Korea's demand that Miss Rice apologize before it will resume negotiations over its nuclear program, she said: "I don't think there is any doubt that I spoke the truth, and I don't know that one apologizes for speaking the truth." In her Senate confirmation hearing in January, Miss Rice called North Korea — along with Iran, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Burma and Belarus — "outposts of tyranny." Miss Rice said yesterday that she was "heartened" by the support of key countries in the Middle East for a U.S.- French effort to expel Syrian forces from Lebanon. As she prepared to leave Monday on her first trip to East Asia as secretary, she said that North Korea is not worthy of the economic gestures Washington is extending to Iran as part of a joint effort with Europe to resolve a nuclear standoff with Tehran. She referred to initiatives announced yesterday that include an agreement to license spare parts for Iranian civilian aircraft and enabling Iran, if it abandons its efforts to enrich uranium, to apply for membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO). North Korea, under the 1994 accord known as the Agreed Framework, froze its plutonium program in exchange for heavy fuel oil and civilian light-water reactors from the United States, South Korea, Japan and the European Union. In the late 1990s, U.S. intelligence discovered that the Pyongyang government had begun a secret program to enrich uranium, which like plutonium, can be used to make atom bombs. Miss Rice said yesterday that some incentives, such as "multilateral security guarantees" and helping the North to "meet its energy needs," were offered during the last round of stalled six-nation talks last summer. "Thus far, nobody has been able to convince them that this is a good idea," she said. In visits to Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing next week, the secretary will look for ways to bring the North back to negotiations, which also involve China, Japan, Russia and South Korea. "You can resolve the near-term problem of the North Korean nuclear program, but we can't do it at the expense of being afraid to speak out about what's actually going on in North Korea," she said. The secretary said the administration agreed to the Iran incentives to give more muscle to the European negotiations with Tehran in the hope that they will lead to a deal. The Europeans, led by Britain, France and Germany, have promised in turn to back Washington's insistence that Iran be referred to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions if it breaks the agreement. Miss Rice said that the administration's gesture toward Iran is not the beginning of a warming between the two countries, which have not had diplomatic relations since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. "This is going to be a long struggle with the Iranians, who are about as entangled in terrorist activity as you can possibly be," she said. [In Vienna yesterday, a senior Iranian diplomat at the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency called the U.S. incentive "too insignificant to comment about," Reuters news agency reported.] Miss Rice said that U.N. envoy Terje Roed-Larsen would go to Damascus this weekend seeking a "very rapid timetable" for Syrian forces to withdraw. "If the Syrians are willing to comply, fine. On what timeline? How do we make sure it doesn't interfere with the elections? If it appears that they are not willing to comply, then what are the sanctions available?" Lebanon is to hold parliamentary elections in May and the Bush administration is demanding that Syrian troops and intelligence agents be gone by then. Miss Rice praised Syria's neighbors and other Arab states for joining the West's call for the Syrians to leave Lebanon. "The unity with which the international community, including the region, has responded to this has been heartening," she said. "I think in part because the Syrians are clearly showing themselves to be such a problem for the region; they've been fairly heavy-handed with their friends." Miss Rice spoke enthusiastically about democracy in the Middle East, saying that elections — as important and welcome as they are — have to be followed by hard work. "I don't mean to underestimate the impact of radical Islamists having a say in the political process, but remember that the political process also has an effect on those who run in it," she said. As "people start getting elected and have to start worrying about constituencies," social issues and living standards — and "not about whether their fire-breathing rhetoric against Israel is being heard" — then "things start to change. "Nine out of ten municipalities [in Gaza] went to Hamas. Well, we've kind of gone back to see what did they talk about. Well, they talked about social services and ... kids going to school and things like that." That is why, she said, the United States has chosen to withhold judgment on the militant group Hamas' recent municipal-election victory in Gaza, and has raised no objections to another terrorist organization, Hezbollah, to remain part in Lebanon's political life. Miss Rice said Mr. Bush deserves credit for his unflinching support for democracy. "I'll tell you what I think the president doesn't get enough credit for. Being firm that in fact the Iraqi elections could take place on the 30th of January. "Many people were saying, 'Well, you should postpone the elections,' and, 'You'll never be able to hold them because of the violence.' 'What if this?' 'What if that?' "And trusting that the Iraqi people were going to face down the terrorists and come out to vote may have been the most important thing." She credited her boss' firmness for making Iran's nuclear ambitions a global issue. "If you think about it, Iran wasn't even on the agenda as a nuclear issue until the president put that on the agenda with the 'axis of evil' speech. And now, slowly but surely, you have the international community uniting around the idea that the Iranians cannot have a nuclear weapon." http://www.washtimes.com/world/20050311-102522-1531r.htm

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Baltimore Sun March 12, 2005 Pg. 1 APG Completes Neutralization Of Stockpiled Mustard Agent Neighbors cheer news, but cleanup isn't over By Laura Barnhardt, Sun Staff As the last 30 gallons of mustard agent stockpiled for decades at the Aberdeen Proving Ground were dissolved yesterday, so were many of the fears among the people who live nearby. A surplus of more than 1,600 tons of mustard agent - best known for its lethal effects in the trench warfare of World War I - had been stored at the military proving ground in Harford County for more than 60 years. The stockpile, which occasionally leaked, prompted worries among area residents and strident debates about how best to dispose of the chemical warfare material. Yesterday, Army officials reported that they had finished emptying the last container and that the non-toxic byproduct was ready to be shipped to New Jersey. "It's been a long time coming," said Arlen Crabb, who has served on the Aberdeen Proving Ground Superfund Citizens Coalition, monitoring the destruction of the toxic stockpile. "People have been scared of it. Accidents do happen." Even with the elimination of the stockpile, there are lingering concerns about buried munitions at Aberdeen that may contain mustard agent as well as other chemicals leaching into ground water. Several areas of the proving ground have been declared Superfund sites under a federal cleanup program because of the abundance of hazardous waste. Work is under way to locate and remove the chemicals. "The community is safer now," said Katherine Squibb, director of the toxicology program at the University of Maryland. "But this doesn't mean APG is risk-free." Residents are also worried about the possibility that more mustard agent could be shipped to the military research and testing facility. The Army says it has not decided whether to seek permission from state and federal regulators to bring in more materials for disposal. But residents say they are glad that the huge stockpile is finally gone. They have long been worried that the mustard agent surplus could be targeted by terrorists or that the dangerous chemicals would continue to leak from steel storage containers. "I'm just elated the last bit is gone," said Helen Richick, a life-long Joppa resident who was appointed as the first community co-chair of the Restoration Advisory Board at APG. "It's a big relief to get it out of our backyard." In the 1920s and 1930s, mustard agent was openly burned and dumped at the site. And in the 1970s, workers allegedly disposed of mustard agent and other poisons by burning them in trenches, according to news reports. Residents successfully lobbied against plans to incinerate the toxic surplus in favor of a process that breaks down the chemical into a treatable, less dangerous byproduct. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Army officials announced that they would speed up the $300 million project, with a unit of the global construction firm Bechtel Group designing and building the facility. The Army began neutralizing the mustard agent in April 2003, APG officials said. But last year, work was halted when a low-level leak was detected inside one of the ventilated drain stations, where the mustard agent was collected and pumped into treatment tanks. Several low--level leaks of mustard agent were also detected last year in a storage facility where 1,800 steel containers of the chemicals were housed. "Our whole goal was to be safe," said Lt. Col. Gerald L. Gladney, commander of the Edgewood Chemical Activity and Aberdeen Chemical Agent Disposal Facility. "This is a very historic moment. We're the first site in the continental United States to completely destroy the stockpile. ... And we're the first site to successfully use this new technology," Gladney said. Nearly 1,800 steel barrels with traces of mustard agent inside still remain at APG, officials said. They will be cleaned, cut and then recycled, said Joseph Lovrich, site project manager at the Aberdeen Chemical Agent Disposal Facility. Over the past two years, the mustard agent was neutralized in a hot-water bath and then tested to make sure the mustard was gone, Lovrich said. The process created about 5 million gallons of a non-toxic byproduct that was released into storage tanks and then shipped by trucks to DuPont Secure Environmental Treatment plant in Deepwater, New Jersey, he said. Only the last batch of the byproduct remains at APG, Lovrich said. Concerns remain about buried radioactive waste and buried grenades, mortars and rockets that could contain mustard, phosgene and other dangerous agents. Cleanup of the base and searches for the buried ordnance in the ground and water continue. Residents also recently lobbied against plans to process 4 million pounds of asbestos - cancer-causing material used in insulation - from military buildings at the Aberdeen site. Crabb and other residents are worried about whether the Army will now try to ship other stockpiles of mustard agent to Aberdeen for disposal. Lovrich said the equipment used at Aberdeen could not simply be cleaned and reassembled at the Army's stockpiles of mustard agent in Anniston, Ala.; Tooele, Utah; Pine Bluff, Ark.; Umatilla, Ore.; Newport, Ind.; Blue Grass, Ky.; or Pueblo, Colo. He confirmed yesterday that the Department of Defense is studying whether shipping the other mustard agent stockpiles is feasible, but said no decision has been made. Importing mustard agent would require federal and state approval. Currently, APG's permits with the state of Maryland require the disposal facility to be closed and all equipment to be dismantled once the mustard agent storage barrels are cleaned, Lovrich said. John E. Nunn III, co-chairman of the Maryland Chemical Demilitarization Citizens Advisory Commission, called yesterday's news that the last batch of mustard agent has been treated "a major step forward." "It's a good day for Maryland," he said. "But the day we want to see is the day this facility is dismantled." http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-te.md.stockpile12mar12,1,1031569.story

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London Daily Telegraph March 12, 2005 Saddam's $2m Offer To WMD Inspector By Francis Harris, in Washington Saddam Hussein's regime offered a $2 million (£1.4 million) bribe to the United Nations' chief weapons inspector to doctor his reports on the search for weapons of mass destruction. Rolf Ekeus, the Swede who led the UN's efforts to track down the weapons from 1991 to 1997, said that the offer came from Tariq Aziz, Saddam's foreign minister and deputy. Mr Ekeus told Reuters news agency that he had passed the information to the Volcker Commission. "I told the Volcker people that Tariq [Aziz] said a couple of million was there if we report right. My answer was, 'That is not the way we do business in Sweden.' " A clean report from Mr Ekeus's inspectors would have been vital in lifting sanctions against Saddam's regime. But the inspectors never established what had happened to the regime's illicit weapons and never gave Iraq a clean bill of health. The news that Iraq attempted to bribe a top UN official is a key piece of evidence for investigators into the scandal surrounding the oil-for-food programme. It proves that Iraq was offering huge sums of cash to influential foreigners in return for political favours. Nile Gardiner, of the Heritage Foundation in Washington, who has followed the inquiries, said: "It's the tip of the iceberg of what the Iraqis were offering. For every official like Ekeus who turned down a bribe, there are many more who will have been tempted by it." Saddam and his henchmen siphoned off an estimated £885 million from the humanitarian scheme, allegedly paying some of that to 270 foreign politicians, officials and journalists. Most of those alleged to have been involved in the scandal, including the former head of the programme, Benon Sevan, have denied that they did anything wrong. A United States Senate report said that Mr Sevan had committed criminal acts by soliciting oil contracts, while the Volcker commission said that he had failed to explain $160,000 (£83,000) paid into personal bank accounts while he was the head of the programme. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/03/12/wsaddam12.xml

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Korea Times March 11, 2005 Ex-US Diplomat Urges Separation Of Human Rights From Nuke Issue WASHINGTON (Yonhap) - Human rights in North Korea should be dealt with separately from the communist state's nuclear program and the six-party talks should focus on the latter, a former U.S. diplomat said Thursday. James Lilly, former ambassador to South Korea, also said he believes the U.S. should engage North Korea in bilateral talks to address the human rights issue. Lilly made the remarks at a brief meeting with Yonhap News Agency following his testimony before the House Foreign Relations Committee. The ex-ambassador is considered a strong candidate for special envoy on North Korea's human rights, a post that would be created under the North Korea Human Rights Act 2004. The law, enacted last year, allows the U.S. administration to spend up to $24 million annually for the next four years for efforts to improve human rights conditions in the North. North Korea has strongly protested the legislation, saying it stems from Washington's ``hostile policy’’ toward Pyongyang and is ultimately aimed at overthrowing the communist regime. Lilly denied reports that he was all but formally appointed to the post as envoy for human rights. Former U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry, who also spoke at the House committee, agreed with Lilly's view that the nuclear issue and human rights should not be linked. He said the six-party talks should focus on the nuclear problem and the human rights issue should be dealt with at an appropriate time and an appropriate place. The U.S. considers North Korea to have one of the worst human rights conditions in the world. In its annual report released last week, the State Department described the state as a ``dictatorship’’ where people have no right to change their government and are subject to torture and extrajudicial killings. http://search.hankooki.com/times/times_view.php?terms=Ex+02+02+US+Diplomat+Urges+Separation+Of+Human +Rights+From+Nuke+Issue+code%3A+kt&path=hankooki3%2Ftimes%2Flpage%2F200503%2Fkt2005031119521 212070.htm

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Korea Times March 10, 2005 NK's Taepodong Missiles Could Be Operational By 2015: LaPorte WASHINGTON (Yonhap) - North Korea could produce long-range missiles capable of hitting the west coast of the United States within the next decade, the chief of U.S. troops in South Korea said Tuesday. The remarks by Gen. Leon J. LaPorte came a week after North Korea threatened to resume missile tests and demanded the U.S. apologize for referring to the communist state as an ``outpost of tyranny.’’ ``The regime's continued development of a three-stage variant of the Taepodong missile, which could be operational within the next decade, could also provide North Korea with the capability to directly target the continental United States or provide the regime's clients with an intercontinental capability that could undermine the stability of other regions,’’ LaPorte told the U.S. Senate's Armed Services Committee. In 1998, North Korea stunned the region by test-firing a long-range Taepodong-I ballistic missile over Japan into the Pacific Ocean. The North is believed to be developing longer-range missiles that could strike as far as Alaska and Hawaii. North Korea declared in 1999 that it would halt missile tests but threatened last Thursday to end the missil moratorium, citing what it called hostile U.S. policy. ``Dialogue between the U.S. and North Korea has been completely blocked since (U.S. President George W.) Bush took office in 2001,’’ the North said in a memorandum. ``As a result, we see no binding force on the missile moratorium.’’ North Korea also announced last month that it is a nuclear power and would stay away from the six-nation talks on its nuclear weapons program. The North took issue with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's designation of the country as one of the world's ``outposts of tyranny.’’ Some U.S. officials believe the North's long-range missiles can be tipped with nuclear warheads or nuclear weapon- sized payloads. ``First of all, they could use them relative to missile technologies and create a situation where they may threaten the entire world,’’ LaPorte told a forum in Seoul last month. At Tuesday's hearing session, LaPorte also expressed concerns over the North's medium- and long-range missiles that can hit U.S. facilities in the region. ``The North Korean ballistic missile inventory includes over 500 Scud missiles that can deliver conventional or chemical munitions across the entire peninsula and within the region,’’ he said. The North, Laporte said, also continues to produce and deploy medium-range Rodong missiles capable of striking cities and military bases with the same payloads. He also cited press reports that the North is preparing to field a new intermediate-range ballistic missile that could reach U.S. facilities in Okinawa, Guam and possibly Alaska. http://search.hankooki.com/times/times_view.php?terms=Taepodong+Missiles+code%3A+kt&path=hankooki3%2F times%2Flpage%2Fnation%2F200503%2Fkt2005031010130811990.htm

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New York Times March 13, 2005 Pg. 1 Looting At Iraqi Weapons Plants Was Systematic, Official Says By James Glanz and William J. Broad BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 12 - In the weeks after Baghdad fell in April 2003, looters systematically dismantled and removed tons of machinery from Saddam Hussein's most important weapons installations, including some with high-precision equipment capable of making parts for nuclear arms, a senior Iraqi official said this week in the government's first extensive comments on the looting. The Iraqi official, Sami al-Araji, the deputy minister of industry, said it appeared that a highly organized operation had pinpointed specific plants in search of valuable equipment, some of which could be used for both military and civilian applications, and carted the machinery away. Dr. Araji said his account was based largely on observations by government employees and officials who either worked at the sites or lived near them. "They came in with the cranes and the lorries, and they depleted the whole sites," Dr. Araji said. "They knew what they were doing; they knew what they want. This was sophisticated looting." The threat posed by these types of facilities was cited by the Bush administration as a reason for invading Iraq, but the installations were left largely unguarded by allied forces in the chaotic months after the invasion. Dr. Araji's statements came just a week after a United Nations agency disclosed that approximately 90 important sites in Iraq had been looted or razed in that period. Satellite imagery analyzed by two United Nations groups - the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, or Unmovic - confirms that some of the sites identified by Dr. Araji appear to be totally or partly stripped, senior officials at those agencies said. Those officials said they could not comment on all of Dr. Araji's assertions, because the groups had been barred from Iraq since the invasion. For nearly a year, the two agencies have sent regular reports to the United Nations Security Council detailing evidence of the dismantlement of Iraqi military installations and, in a few cases, the movement of Iraqi gear to other countries. In addition, a report issued last October by the chief American arms inspector in Iraq, Charles A. Duelfer, told of evidence of looting at crucial sites. The disclosures by the Iraqi ministry, however, added new information about the thefts, detailing the timing, the material taken and the apparent skill shown by the thieves. Dr. Araji said equipment capable of making parts for missiles as well as chemical, biological and nuclear arms was missing from 8 or 10 sites that were the heart of Iraq's dormant program on unconventional weapons. After the invasion, occupation forces found no unconventional arms, and C.I.A. inspectors concluded that the effort had been largely abandoned after the Persian Gulf war in 1991. Dr. Araji said he had no evidence regarding where the equipment had gone. But his account raises the possibility that the specialized machinery from the arms establishment that the war was aimed at neutralizing had made its way to the black market or was in the hands of foreign governments. "Targeted looting of this kind of equipment has to be seen as a proliferation threat," said Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, a private nonprofit organization in Washington that tracks the spread of unconventional weapons. Dr. Araji said he believed that the looters themselves were more interested in making money than making weapons. The United Nations, worried that the material could be used in clandestine bomb production, has been hunting for it, largely unsuccessfully, across the Middle East. In one case, investigators searching through scrap yards in Jordan last June found specialized vats for highly corrosive chemicals that had been tagged and monitored as part of the international effort to keep watch on the Iraqi arms program. The vessels could be used for harmless industrial processes or for making chemical weapons. American military officials in Baghdad did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the findings. But American officials have said in the past that while they were aware of the importance of some of the installations, there was not enough military personnel to guard all of them during and after the invasion. White House officials, apprised of the Iraqi account by The New York Times, said it was already well known that many weapons sites had been looted. They had no other comment. Daily Looting Reports Many of Iraq's weapons sites are clustered in an area from Baghdad's southern outskirts to roughly the town of Iskandariya, about 30 miles south. Dr. Araji, who like many others at the Industry Ministry kept going to work immediately after the invasion, was able to collect observations of the organized looting from witnesses who went to the ministry in Baghdad each day. The Industry Ministry also sent teams of engineers to the looted sites in August and September of 2003 as part of an assessment undertaken for the Coalition Provisional Authority, the interim American-led administrative apparatus. By then, virtually all of the most refined equipment was gone, Dr. Araji said. The peak of the organized looting, Dr. Araji estimates, occurred in four weeks from mid-April to mid-May of 2003 as teams with flatbed trucks and other heavy equipment moved systematically from site to site. That operation was followed by rounds of less discriminating thievery. "The first wave came for the machines," Dr. Araji said. "The second wave, cables and cranes. The third wave came for the bricks." Hajim M. al-Hasani, the minister of industry, referred questions about looting to Dr. Araji, who commented during a lengthy interview conducted in English in his office on Wednesday and a brief phone interview on Friday. Dr. Araji said that if the equipment had left the country, its most likely destination was a neighboring state. David Albright, an authority on nuclear weaponry who is president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, said that Syria and Iran were the countries most likely to be in the market for the kind of equipment that Mr. Hussein purchased, at great cost, when he was secretly trying to build a nuclear weapon in the 1980's. Losses at Enrichment Site As examples of the most important sites that were looted, Dr. Araji cited the Nida Factory, the Badr General Establishment, Al Ameer, Al Radwan, Al Hatteen, Al Qadisiya and Al Qaqaa. Al Radwan, for example, was a manufacturing plant for the uranium enrichment program, with enormous machine tools for making highly specialized parts, according to the Wisconsin Project. The Nida Factory was implicated in both the nuclear program and the manufacture of Scud missiles. Al Qaqaa, with some 1,100 structures, manufactured powerful explosives that could be used for conventional missile warheads and for setting off a nuclear detonation. Last fall, Iraqi government officials warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that some 377 tons of those explosives were missing after the invasion. But Al Qaqaa also contained a wide variety of weapons manufacturing machinery, including 800 pieces of chemical equipment. The kinds of machinery at the various sites included equipment that could be used to make missile parts, chemical weapons or centrifuges essential for enriching uranium for atom bombs. All of that "dual use" equipment also has peaceful applications - for example, a tool to make parts for a nuclear implosion device or for a powerful commercial jet turbine. Mr. Hussein's rise to power in Iraq culminated in his military building not only deadly missiles but many unconventional arms. After the 1991 gulf war, international inspectors found that Baghdad was close to making an atom bomb and had succeeded in producing thousands of biological and chemical warheads. Starting in 1991, the United Nations began destroying Iraq's unconventional arms and setting up a vast effort to monitor the country's industrial infrastructure to make sure that Baghdad lived up to its disarmament promises. The International Atomic Energy Agency, based in Vienna, was put in charge of nuclear sites, and Unmovic, based in New York, was given responsibility for chemical and biological plants as well as factories that made rockets and missiles. A Western diplomat familiar with satellite reconnaissance done by the International Atomic Energy Agency said it confirmed some of the Iraqi findings. For instance, he said, it showed that the Nida Factory had been partly destroyed, with some buildings removed, and some rebuilt. He added that the Badr General Establishment was almost entirely dismantled. By contrast, he said, the agency's photo analysts found Al Ameer untouched, but only as seen from overhead. "The buildings could be totally empty," he said. The diplomat added that the atomic energy agency's reconnaissance team found that Al Radwan was "significantly dismantled" and that Al Qadisiya had almost vanished. At the sprawling Hatteen base, he said, "parts are untouched, and parts are 100 percent gone." Before the invasion, the United Nations was monitoring those kinds of sites. Two senior officials of the monitoring commission said in an interview that their agency's analysis of satellite reconnaissance photos of Iraq showed visible looting and destruction at five of the seven sites that had been cited by Dr. Araji. The officials cautioned that the agency zeroed in on certain buildings of special interest in its monitoring work on unconventional weapons and that other structures or warehouses at a particular identified site might still be intact. "You might have a place with 100 buildings but we'd have an interest in only 3 of them," an official said. Officials at the United Nations monitoring agency said some areas of the sprawling Qaqaa installation involved in chemical processing had been wrecked by fire and possible extensive looting. Unknown is the fate of such equipment there like separators, heat exchangers, mixers and chemical reactors, all of which can be used in making chemical weapons. The Badr General Establishment, they said, had been systematically razed. "It's fairly significant," one official said of the looting and disappearance of important buildings. The Radwan site has been dismantled, they said, with the destruction quite extensive. And the Qadisiya small arms plant has been razed, they said, as have the buildings the agency monitored at the sprawling Hatteen installation. The two officials said the agency had no information on the condition of the Nida Factory or the Ameer site. No Saudi or Iranian Replies The recent monitoring agency report said Unmovic had asked Iraq's neighbors if they were aware of whether any equipment under agency monitoring had moved in or through their countries. Syrian officials, it said, replied that "no relevant scrap from Iraq had passed through Syria." The agency, the report added, had yet to receive a response from Iran and Saudi Arabia. Dr. Hasani, the Iraqi industry minister, said the sites of greatest concern had been part of the Military Industrialization Commission, a department within the ministry until it became a separate entity in the 1990's. The commission, widely known as the M.I.C., was dissolved after the fall of Baghdad, and responsibility for its roughly 40 sites was divided between the ministries of industry and finance, Dr. Hasani said. "We got 11 of them," he said. Dr. Araji, whose tenure with the ministry goes back to the 1980's, is now involved in plans to use the sites as manufacturing centers in what the ministry hopes will be a new free-market economy in Iraq. He said that disappointment at losing such valuable equipment was a prime reason that the ministry was determined to speak frankly about what had happened. "We talk straight about these matters, because it's a sad thing that this took place in Iraq," Dr. Araji said. "We need anything that could support us here." "When you have good factories that could support that move and that transformation," he said, "it would be good for the economy of the country." In an interview, a senior atomic energy agency official said the agency had used the reconnaissance photos to study roughly 100 sites in Iraq but that the imagery's high cost meant that the inspectors could afford to get updates of individual sites only about once a year. In its most recent report to the United Nations Security Council, in October, the agency said it "continues to be concerned about the widespread and apparently systematic dismantlement that has taken place at sites previously relevant to Iraq's nuclear program." Alarms to Security Council Agency inspectors, in visiting other countries, have discovered tons of industrial scrap, some radioactively contaminated, from Iraq, the report noted. It added, however, that the agency had been unable to track down any of the high-quality, dual-use equipment or materials. "The disappearance of such equipment," the report emphasized, "may be of proliferation significance." The monitoring commission has filed regular reports to the Security Council since raising alarms last May about looting in Iraq, the dismantlement of important weapons installations and the export of dangerous materials to foreign states. Officials of the commission and the atomic energy agency have repeatedly called on the Iraqi government to report on what it knows of the fate of the thousands of pieces of monitored equipment and stockpiles of monitored chemicals and materials. Last fall, Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, put public pressure on the interim Iraqi government to start the process of accounting for nuclear-related materials still ostensibly under the agency's supervision. Iraq is obliged, he wrote to the president of the Security Council on Oct. 1, to declare semiannually changes that have occurred or are foreseen. In interviews, officials of the monitoring commission and the atomic energy agency said the two agencies had heard nothing from Baghdad - with one notable exception. On Oct. 10, the Iraqi Ministry of Science and Technology wrote to the atomic agency to say a stockpile of high explosives at Al Qaqaa had been lost because of "theft and looting." During the American presidential election last fall, news of that letter ignited a political firestorm. Privately, officials of the monitoring commission and the atomic energy agency have speculated on whether the political uproar made Baghdad reluctant to disclose more details of looting. James Glanz reported from Baghdad for this article, and William J. Broad from New York. David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/international/middleeast/13loot.html?

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Los Angeles Times March 13, 2005 Pg. 1 The Deal To Disarm Kadafi Libya's decision to hand over its banned weapons followed lengthy talks and an equipment seizure. Some see ideas for dealing with Iran. By Douglas Frantz and Josh Meyer, Times Staff Writers LONDON — The senior British official paced his office as evening turned to night, every few minutes grabbing the telephone to dial Tripoli, the Libyan capital. "Have they broadcast it yet?" he asked Anthony Layden, the British ambassador. "There's a football match on television," Layden replied. Three days earlier, Libya had agreed to give up its nuclear and chemical weapons programs in return for an end to economic sanctions, concluding months of secret negotiations with the British and Americans. A script had been hammered out word by word in a marathon meeting. The Libyan foreign minister would announce the decision on national television and the country's leader, Moammar Kadafi, would follow with a brief, but mandatory, public endorsement. The hours ticked by as British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush waited for the announcement. It was late 2003 and both needed this victory to stem increasing criticism over intelligence failures before the Iraq war. "We were worrying that it was all going to get called off," said the British official, who recounted the episode on condition his name not be used. "It got later and later." In recent interviews, participants in the three-way talks have provided the most detailed description yet of the events leading up to Libya's announcement, which marked a historic shift for what was considered an outlaw regime as it tried to win back its place within the world community. Officials still disagree about exactly why Kadafi gave up the programs. Some information supports President Bush's contention that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the broader U.S. doctrine of pre-emptive strikes forced the Libyan leader to act. But several British and U.S. officials said Kadafi had been trying for years to surrender the weapons to end the international sanctions crippling the Libyan economy and smooth the way for his eldest son's eventual assumption of power. At a time when the Bush administration is talking tough about Iran's nuclear program, some diplomats say the mix of negotiations, good intelligence work and pressure brought to bear on Libya offers a game plan for dealing with Tehran. When the soccer match finally ended on the night of Dec. 19, 2003, Libya's foreign minister, Mohammed Abderrahmane Chalgam, went on national television to announce that the country would disclose and dismantle its unconventional weapons programs. Kadafi then appeared briefly to deliver his public blessing, calling it a "wise decision and a courageous step." Shortly after 10 p.m. in London, Blair and Bush made separate public appearances to praise Kadafi's decision and promise to help Libya back into the community of nations. In his office, the senior British official breathed a sigh of relief. "It was a big prize," he said later. "We weren't sure until the end that it would actually work." Within a month of the announcement, U.S. and British experts were swarming over the secret installations where Libya manufactured chemical weapons and had started work on a nuclear bomb. What they found would surprise and alarm them, and underscore just how big a prize they'd won. The groundwork for Kadafi's decision was laid not only by the U.S. invasion of Iraq, but by overtures from Libya to the U.S. and Britain that began in the late 1990s, according to officials from the three countries. Libya approached the Clinton administration in 1999 with an offer to give up its chemical weapons program in exchange for an easing of the sanctions imposed because of its alleged support for terrorism, a former administration official said. The U.S. refused, telling the Libyans that taking responsibility for the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 was a much higher priority, the former official said. The British were more receptive. They reestablished diplomatic relations with Tripoli in July 1999. Libya turned over two intelligence officers implicated in the Lockerbie attack for trial by a Scottish court, and the U.S. and Britain agreed to push for a temporary lifting of U.N. sanctions. One of the Libyan agents was convicted in January 2001, and momentum toward a final resolution of Lockerbie picked up in October 2001 when a delegation from Libya slipped into London to meet with British and U.S. officials, according to a participant in those talks. The Libyan delegation was headed by Mousa Kusa, the head of external intelligence, who had been expelled from Britain nearly two decades earlier on suspicion of coordinating terrorist attacks. The negotiations eventually led to Libya taking responsibility for the deaths of 259 people on the plane and 11 on the ground and agreeing to pay $2.7 billion to the relatives. But U.S. and British participants said they had made it clear to the Libyans that resolving Lockerbie was not enough. "We had made a point that while Lockerbie was extremely important, a sine qua non for progress on full reintegration would depend on addressing the WMD programs," said one official who, like most people interviewed for this article, spoke on condition his name not be used. Negotiations over Libya's weapons programs gained urgency in March 2003 after Seif Islam Kadafi, the leader's eldest son and likely successor, met with British intelligence agents at a London hotel. "Let's clear the air about the rumor that there are weapons of mass destruction in Libya," the younger Kadafi said, according to a senior U.S. official briefed on the conversation. Because Kadafi was regarded as an emissary from his father, his message was seen as a signal that the Libyan leader was ready to make a deal. By then, the U.S. and British knew that Libya, despite denials, had manufactured chemical weapons. They also knew that Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan's network was supplying equipment and know-how for Libya's nuclear weapons program. In the weeks that followed, two officials from the CIA and two from its British counterpart, MI6, met sporadically with Kusa and other Libyans in London and several other European cities but made little progress. "There were periodic contacts, but the Libyans were not admitting they had a nuclear program," said the senior U.S. official. "They were being coy." Apart from Bush and Blair, only a handful of senior officials in Washington and London knew of the negotiations. They feared that a leak could mobilize opposition either inside Libya or in the larger Arab world, giving Kadafi a reason for second thoughts. In late August 2003, U.S. and British intelligence received a tip that a Malaysian factory affiliated with Khan was sending a shipment of nuclear equipment to Tripoli. One former official said covert operatives watched as five containers were loaded onto a ship in Kuala Lumpur and a satellite tracked the vessel to the Persian Gulf port of Dubai. Agents also watched as Khan's accomplices removed the crates in Dubai and, a few days later, loaded them onto a second vessel, the BBC China. As the BBC China passed through the Suez Canal and entered the Mediterranean Sea on its way to Tripoli, agents on other ships monitored its progress. On Oct. 4, the ship's captain was sent a radio message ordering him to divert to the southern Italian port of Taranto, where U.S. and Italian authorities removed the crates. A former CIA official declined to confirm any details, but said, "It was a great operation, a lot of derring-do." Later, Bush and other U.S. officials praised the seizure as an intelligence triumph that, combined with the hard-line American approach on Iraq, forced Kadafi's hand. "The capture of the BBC China helped make clear to Libya that we had a lot of information about what it was doing," said John S. Wolf, who was assistant secretary of State for nonproliferation at the time. The senior British official, who was involved in the negotiations with Libya, acknowledged that confiscating the shipment was important, but said Libya had already strongly hinted at the existence of a nuclear weapons program and intended to give it up. "The BBC China was another nail in the coffin," he said. "But one can overplay the significance of that event." One sign of Kadafi's intentions had come in September 2003, when a small team of CIA and MI6 agents flew to Tripoli in an unmarked CIA jet for another round of talks, the first in Libya. They sought permission to bring in specialists to examine the weapons installations, according to two U.S. officials involved in the operation. A European diplomat said Libyan officials told him later that the decision was driven by economics. "From my conversations with the Libyans, it appeared that they had determined that it was too expensive to develop nuclear weapons, both in specific terms and in terms of sanctions," the diplomat said. Seif Islam Kadafi told CBS News last year that U.S. pressure was not behind his father's decision. "First of all, we started negotiating before the beginning of the war," he said. "And it's not because we are afraid or under American pressure or blackmail." Still, the talks picked up speed after the cargo was seized. Within days, a larger contingent of CIA and MI6 experts arrived in Libya, said officials involved in the process. A far more exhaustive inventory of Libya's nuclear and chemical weapons programs was taken during a 12-day trip that started on Dec. 1, said one of the officials. On Dec. 16, 2003, a Libyan delegation sat down to work out the final details of the deal over lunch with their U.S. and British counterparts at the private Travellers Club in the heart of London. Along with Kusa, the Libyans were represented by their ambassador to Italy, Abdul-Ati Obeidi, and Mohammed Azwai, envoy to Britain. Across from them were William Ehrman and David Landsman, senior officials from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and two MI6 agents. The small U.S. team was headed by Robert Joseph, the National Security Council's counter-proliferation head, and Stephen Kappes, the CIA deputy director of operations. Kappes, a veteran case officer who had known Kusa for years, had supervised the intelligence operation and led the initial visits to Libya. The wrangling lasted 10 hours. Two participants said the British and U.S. teams insisted that Libya clearly admit that it possessed chemical and nuclear weapons programs and promise to dismantle them. "It was a tough meeting," one said. "They were giving up things that cost a lot of money, and a lot of people had their careers tied up in these programs. It was not an easy thing to shut them down and have them removed." In the end, the Libyans agreed to relinquish everything connected with both programs but balked at the demand that Kadafi make the announcement. A compromise was reached allowing someone else to make the announcement. But the Libyan leader would bless the decision publicly. British Airways Flight 898 arrived at Tripoli international airport Jan. 18, 2004. Aboard was a 14-member team of U.S. and British experts under the command of Donald Mahley, a deputy assistant secretary of State for arms control and retired Army nuclear weapons officer. The Americans were the first U.S. diplomats to officially visit Libya since 1980. Their passports carried special stamps from the State Department permitting them to enter the country. Fearing Kadafi might change his mind, the team worked day and night to inventory hundreds of tons of equipment sent by the Khan network. Their top priority was to remove key components of the uranium enrichment plant being built to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons. The Libyans had amassed much more equipment than the U.S. imagined, but experts found that a working enrichment plant was a distant dream. Two days after the team arrived, the Libyans also turned over hundreds of pages of blueprints for manufacturing a nuclear warhead, which they had bought from the Khan ring. The plans were deemed so sensitive that they were put in a secure diplomatic pouch, and two Americans alternated sleeping with them under their pillow, one of the participants said. While the U.S. and British team was eager to get the plans and other sensitive material on a plane as soon as possible, the Libyans were eager not to draw attention to the hand-over. Kusa insisted that a U.S. plane could only land at night at a little-used airport outside Tripoli and that it had to be gone before dawn. At 9:30 p.m. on Jan. 28, 2004, a giant C-17 cargo plane from McCord Air Force Base in Tacoma, Wash., its U.S. Air Force markings painted over, landed at the airport. Less than five hours later, at 2:17 a.m., the aircraft took off, carrying 55,000 pounds of nuclear equipment and the guidance systems for long-range missiles. It was bound for Tennessee, where the material would be transferred to the national weapons laboratory at Oak Ridge. "We wanted to get the aircraft out of there as quickly as possible," said a U.S. official who was present at the time. "We lived with the possibility that Kadafi might change his mind." Two months later, an American-flagged freighter sailed out of Tripoli carrying more than 1,000 tons of additional equipment from Libya's nuclear program as well as five long-range Scud missiles bought from North Korea. The Bush administration lifted most restrictions on Libya and resumed diplomatic relations last summer. Officials said they hoped Kadafi's decision would send a message to Iran, which the U.S. accuses of trying to develop nuclear weapons. "We wanted to show other countries that there was a way out," said a U.S. diplomat based in Europe. Iran concealed its nuclear program for nearly 20 years but insists that the purpose is to generate electricity. The regime has refused to back down in the face of U.S. threats to take the matter to the United Nations for sanctions. Policymakers and experts point out that there are differences between Libya and Iran. Chief among them is Kadafi's iron grip on power, which meant that no one was likely to challenge his decision. Still, some argue that the Bush administration's refusal to negotiate with Iran or participate in talks initiated by Britain, France and Germany ignores what happened in Libya. The administration modified its position Friday, announcing that it would drop objections to Iran joining the World Trade Organization and allow it to buy spare parts for civilian aircraft to bolster the Europeans' negotiating stance. "The most important lesson from the Libyan experience is that diplomacy goes hand in hand with the credible threat of military force to maximize influence on a nation pursuing weapons of mass destruction," said Richard L. Russell, a former U.S. intelligence officer who teaches at Georgetown University in Washington. "Neither is any good without the other." http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-fg-libya13mar13,1,6995333.story

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Boston Globe March 13, 2005 US Is Urged To Back 2 Nuclear Treaties Lack of support may increase risk, diplomats say By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff OSLO -- Diplomats representing more than a dozen countries have urged the United States to embrace a set of proposed treaties to stem the spread of nuclear arms. They accuse Washington of backing away from a collective approach to arms control and helping to erode a three-decade framework for controlling nuclear weapons. Meeting in the Norwegian capital over two days earlier this month, the diplomats and European, African, and Asian nuclear specialists blamed the United States' refusal to support two major treaties -- which would halt production of weapons-grade material and stop all nuclear testing -- for providing greater incentive for other nations with nuclear ambitions to cling to their weapons programs. In the process, they said, Washington may be reinforcing Iran's and North Korea's sense that nuclear arsenals are critical to their security. ''Even as the world is witness to unflagging interest in nuclear explosives and growing proliferation . . . there is a regrettable tendency among some states to deemphasize the role of formal arms control," according to a report by the meeting's sponsor, the Norwegian Institute of Strategic Studies, which its authors acknowledged refers to the United States. ''This may serve to heighten, rather than reduce the risk" of the spread of nuclear weapons to terrorists. At least seven nations have declared they have nuclear weapons. Among those countries, the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, and France joined the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1970. Israel, which is believed to have joined the nuclear club in the 1960s, refused to sign the treaty. Pakistan and India declined to sign the treaty and subsequently developed nuclear weapons. Now, Iran and North Korea, which were signatories, are believed to be violating the pact and pursuing weapons covertly. But as the treaty is set to come up for review by its 190 signatories in Austria in May, a growing number of US allies are calling on the United States to take the lead in strengthening international arms control by reversing its opposition to the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, which bans making weapons-grade materials, and to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. At the same time, they said, the United States appears to be undermining the effort to reduce the number of nuclear weapons by considering more advanced designs of its own, keeping thousands of warheads on alert, shielding facilities from international scrutiny, developing a national missile defense system that some worry could spark a new arms race with China or Russia, and keeping an estimated 400 tactical nuclear weapons in Europe while chiding the Russians for not destroying their battlefield nukes. The US government bristles at the criticism that it is responsible for eroding international arms control, contending that it is violators of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty like Iran and North Korea and illicit nuclear sales by Pakistan's chief nuclear scientist that are most to blame. ''A gradual, step-by-step process toward nuclear disarmament is the proper and most effective course to pursue," the State Department said in a paper delivered to the conference. ''The United States is on that course and is making real strides toward that end." The United States, officials contend, remains at the forefront of arms control. It has spent vastly more than any other country, an estimated $9 billion over the last 13 years, to help destroy nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union and has pledged billions more. The United States has also reduced its weapons stockpile by 13,000 since 1988 and plans to cut that number to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads by 2012. Between 1994 and 1997, Washington eliminated nearly 1,000 strategic nuclear missiles and bombers. And since 1997, it has eliminated 64 heavy bombers, 150 ballistic missile silos, taken several nuclear submarines out of service, and retired and removed 37 Peacekeeper nuclear missiles, according to State Department officials. But the Bush administration opposes the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, a measure the Clinton administration supported when it was introduced in 1993. The treaty would bind nuclear powers to permanently halt production of highly-enriched uranium and plutonium, the material needed for a nuclear weapon. ''Fissile materials suitable for production of nuclear weapons are clearly over-produced by superpowers," said Alexander I. Nikitan, director of the Center for Political and International Studies in Moscow. ''But still [the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty] is not concluded." The United States refuses to sign the treaty, out of fear that others will violate it, a position that seems to call into question the usefulness of any such agreement. ''The problem has been that we did an extensive review, and we do not believe that we can get adequate verification of such a treaty," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in her Jan. 18 confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Another international agreement with wide support -- the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, first proposed by President Kennedy -- was defeated by the US Senate in 1999 after it was backed by successive US presidents. The Bush administration has declined to resubmit the treaty for approval, also because it says verification would be a problem. ''The United States does not support the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and will not become a party to it," according to a State Department position paper provided to conference participants here. However, ''as a matter of policy, the United States continues to observe a nuclear testing moratorium and encourages other states not to test," the paper said. The international specialists meeting here did not only attack the United States: Many complained that Russia and China have also violated the spirit of arms control by pursuing new types of nuclear weapons and failing to account for their arsenals. But most officials agreed that the United States wields greater influence and refuses to consider that some of its actions may be weakening global efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. Rogue nations seeking nuclear weapons ''cannot be rolled back until the [declared] nuclear weapons states roll back," said Hans Blix, the Swedish diplomat and former arms inspector who now heads the United Nations- sponsored Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission in Stockholm. The commission is preparing an exhaustive report on how to prevent nuclear terrorism in 2006. Other diplomats emphasized that time may be running out to save global arms control. ''The nonproliferation regime is being severely tested," said Kim Traavik, a top official in the Norwegian Foreign Ministry. ''The nuclear weapons states must lead the way, reducing stocks and moving toward disarmament." Stephan Klement, a European Union representative for nonproliferation issues, said that greater openness by the United States, Russia, and other nuclear states on their arsenals is among the most critical steps to lower other nations' desire for nuclear weapons. The fissile material and test ban treaties, he said, are two places to begin. But Blix, recalling President Reagan's famous arms control creed of ''trust but verify," said a major problem is that ''the present [US] administration seems to say 'do not trust or verify.' " http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/03/13/us_is_urged_to_back_2_nuclear_treaties/

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Washington Post March 13, 2005 Pg. 23 On Asia Trip, Rice To Nudge Allies On N. Korea Secretary Seeks to Knit Common Message By Glenn Kessler, Washington Post Staff Writer With the crisis over North Korea's nuclear programs looming in the background, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this week will dash across Asia, seeking to nudge East Asian allies into a coordinated strategy for confronting the reclusive communist nation. Some U.S. and Asian officials are increasingly convinced North Korea has no intention of giving up its nuclear weapons programs, opening up the possibility that the Bush administration and perhaps Japan would begin to favor pressing for tougher action against the reclusive communist nation. But many Chinese and South Korean officials believe it is necessary to keep pressing along the diplomatic track, even though North Korea has refused to return to six-nation negotiating sessions that have been dormant for nine months. Rice, who leaves tomorrow, will begin her week-long journey in South Asia. She will assess the rapprochement between India and Pakistan -- including possibly approving the sale of F-16 fighter jets to both countries -- and visit Afghanistan to discuss the nation's epidemic of opium production. Then, during a visit to Japan, South Korea and China, Rice will address the North Korean problem. She will also give a speech in Japan about Asia's role in the world, a theme that would encompass not only Japan's interest in playing a greater role in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but also the growing economic, political and military might of China. Since Bush took office in 2001, China has used its soaring economic power to increase its influence across the Asian-Pacific region while its military buildup has alarmed Pentagon military planners. The Chinese government also is considered critical to resolving the impasse with North Korea because it supplies Pyongyang with much of its energy. "We recognize that one of the biggest challenges for the United States is to foster the integration of China into the international system in a way that it's a productive force, not a destructive force," Rice told Congress last week. "So a lot of our efforts are aimed at that." Pyongyang announced Feb. 10 that it possessed nuclear weapons and would not return to six-nation talks on dismantling its programs. Since then, the United States and other nations in the region have tried to persuade North Korea to return to the discussions, but with little success. The North Korean leadership has responded with a list of conditions, including a demand that Rice apologize for calling it an "outpost of tyranny." U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said there is widespread disappointment within the administration over China's performance thus far in trying to lure North Korea back to the talks. A senior Chinese official traveled to Pyongyang shortly after the Feb. 10 announcement and elicited a highly conditional statement from North Korean leader Kim Jong Il that his government might return to the talks. More disturbing to U.S. officials, the Chinese in private discussions have indicated they are not yet willing to increase pressure on North Korea, though no other nation appears to possess the same amount of leverage. Chinese officials have even expressed some sympathy for North Korea's concern over the "outpost of tyranny" remark, suggesting a pullback of that remark would set a positive tone for the talks. Rice, in an interview with the Washington Times last week, rejected that idea. "I don't think there's any doubt that, you know, I spoke the truth," she said. Chinese officials also have repeatedly pressed the United States to show more flexibility in the negotiations. For instance, they have also proposed that the United States join Japan and South Korea in providing fuel oil to North Korea once Pyongyang agrees to permanently give up its nuclear programs -- a significant concession that U.S. officials have rejected. Rice will visit Tokyo and Seoul first, apparently seeking to knit together a common message to present to the Chinese, considered the linchpin for getting the North Koreans back to the talks. Publicly, the participants in the six-party talks continue to insist they are committed to them. But North Korea's continuing refusal to attend has begun to shift the debate within the administration, with some officials now considering ways to move beyond the stalled talks to a series of economic and diplomatic pressure tactics, including bringing the matter to the U.N. Security Council. Other officials, however, maintain that North Korea's announcement was merely a negotiating ruse. Over the past two years, the administration in effect has pursued both a diplomatic track and a pressure track, such as trying to halt North Korea's trade in illicit goods. One official said that if the diplomatic track remains frozen, then the tactics used to isolate North Korea would certainly increase in importance. The six-party talks were last held nine months ago, when the United States presented a modified proposal for ending the impasse. North Korea, which has sought billions of dollars in energy, economic aid and loans in exchange for giving up its nuclear ambitions, has never officially responded to the offer. Under the U.S. proposal, if North Korea agrees to terminate its nuclear programs, South Korea and other U.S. allies could provide immediate energy assistance to North Korea, which would have three months to disclose its programs and have its claims verified by U.S. intelligence. The United States eventually would join its allies in giving written security assurances and participate in a process that might ultimately result in direct U.S. aid. An Asian diplomat involved in the talks said there had already been discussion with U.S. officials about how to pull the plug on the six-party talks, such as holding a pro forma meeting that would make it clear they would not resume again. He said U.S. officials had told the Chinese that if another session is held, North Korea would be expected to make a serious counteroffer to the U.S. proposal. "We won't be meeting just to talk," he said. The Chinese response thus far suggests the administration may face difficulty if it tries to ratchet up the pressure on North Korea. China values stability on its border and has always viewed North Korea as a buffer to U.S. troops in South Korea. "An interesting question for the Chinese is whether they would prefer a North Korea without nuclear weapons or a North Korea that remains a buffer state," the Asian diplomat said. "I don't know the answer." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30288-2005Mar12.html

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Christian Science Monitor March 14, 2005 Pg. 1 Iran Rebuffs US Over Nuclear Plans The US offer was the first major diplomatic shift toward the Islamic republic since Bush cast it as part of the 'axis of evil.' By Scott Peterson, Staff Writer Of The Christian Science Monitor TEHRAN, IRAN – Iran's rejection of new US incentives to urge the Islamic republic to halt its nuclear ambitions could not have been on more prominent display. Painted across a banner 20 feet wide and nearly 10 feet tall, hanging directly under the pulpit during Friday prayers at Tehran University - and shown live on national television - were the words of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. "We will definitely not stop our nuclear activities," the banner proclaimed. "It is our red line." The US offer - to drop objections to Iran's entry into the World Trade Organization and permit it to purchase spare aircraft parts if it freezes its nuclear program - marks the first significant policy change toward Iran since President Bush labeled it part of an "axis of evil" in January 2002. But Iran dismisses the offer as "insignificant" and says the price will be much higher to get it to give up nuclear technology that it legally has a right to pursue under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). "That offer ... is an assault on Iranian pride," says Amir Mohebian, political editor of the conservative newspaper, Resalat. "Some US politicians say: 'If we don't attack you, it's a favor.'" Instead, Mr. Mohebian says there is room for real dialogue, but at a higher level: "The US should send the message: 'We are not your enemy.' " Washington says Iran's civilian program is a cover to build nuclear weapons, and has ratcheted up its rhetoric in recent months. Tehran denies the charge and says it does not want nuclear weapons, but is creating its own nuclear fuel cycle for atomic energy. Two years of inspections by the UN nuclear watchdog have found a string of violations in a program kept secret for 18 years, but no evidence that Iran has sought to make atomic bombs. Britain, France, and Germany have been in negotiations to get Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions. The US offer aims to join the Europeans in a united front; in exchange, the EU has agree to support taking Iran before the UN Security Council if talks fail. Bush administration officials, after conducting regime change in Afghanistan and Iraq - military campaigns that have brought US troops to Iran's borders east and west - have repeatedly made clear that they oppose the clerical leadership in Iran. The fact that the Bush administration would even consider European requests for incentives - much less opt for them - are "an enormous change" for this administration, says Ken Pollack, author of "The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict between Iran and America." Ironically, he says, the diplomatic route is also being favored by some US hawks. "The people who are arguing for military action [against Iran] are all in favor of taking it to the UN," says Mr. Pollack, a Mideast specialist at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "Their feeling is the UN will punt - the UN will never do anything - and that will provide the pretext for going to war." Others see a similar result. "To me this seems like a transparent strategy: you offer Iran modest incentives that ... the US knows Iran will refuse," says Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran analyst for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, speaking from Washington. "Then you can take [Iran] to the Security Council with a clear conscience, knowing that you did offer incentives, but Iran wasn't willing to accept. "Whether or not it's exaggerated, there is a concern among mullahs that the US is not going to rest until it's removed the regime in Tehran," he says. "If that's their mindset, then [Iran] pursuing this deterrent is paramount." Before giving up the crown jewels of a potential nuclear deterrent, experts say Iran expects some kind of guarantee that it will not be attacked. "The question is: How much of that [Iran rejection] is negotiating in the bazaar, and how much of that is true?" asks Joseph Cirincione, head of the nonproliferation program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, who returned last week from a nuclear conference in Tehran that included a visit to an Iranian conversion facility at Isfahan. He says that, while there needs to be give and take on both sides, "That is exactly what many in the administration don't want to do - for some, the whole point is to overthrow the regime," he says. "So you really have a problem: The radicals in Tehran and Washington have the ability to torpedo any negotiations, by insisting on the right to enrich uranium on one hand, and insisting on the right to overthrow the government on the other." While the ability to enrich uranium and actually having nuclear weapons aren't the same thing, some in Iran argue that they serve the same purpose. "Atomic knowledge is modernity, progress; and we are living in an environment where that [enrichment] capability is a deterrent, a power," says Nasser Hadian-Jazy, a political scientist at Tehran University with close ties to the government. "For us it is much easier than to have a bomb." He says Iran's supreme leader views the US offer as "humiliating." Iran expects, instead, sincere efforts to create a regional security bloc and perhaps a nuclear-free zone that destroys Israel's estimated 200 warheads. The London Sunday Times reported Sunday that Israeli commandos are training for a mission to destroy Iran's nuclear sites - and that the US would not stand in the way - if diplomacy fails. "We joined the NPT to enjoy its fruits, and nuclear expertise is one of them," says Mr. Hadian-Jazy. "You can't just ask Iran to give up this right, and at the same time talk about regime change, sanctions, and military attack. It doesn't make sense." There is "no chance" that Iran will dismantle its nuclear program, adds Hadian-Jazy, though there "can be a number of ways to produce a deal." Iran might accept real-time, joint international monitoring of its enrichment process, or agree not to manufacture certain nuclear material. Even limiting the range of missiles could be on the table. Speaking in Venezuela on Saturday, Iran's president Mohamad Khatami said Iran was "willing to work with the world to give more security that Iran is not moving toward construction of nuclear weapons." Echoing moderates in Iran, Hadian-Jazy argues that having nuclear weapons would increase Iran's vulnerability, by destabilizing the region with a new arms race. Any US military strike or severe sanctions would push many more Iranians into the "must-have the bomb" camp of the hard-liners, that Hadian-Jazy says is a small minority today. And there may be other reasons for talks. Cirincione says he was struck by the "rather small" scale of the Isfahan facility, indicating to him that Iran has a "long way to go before they perfect these techniques, and assemble everything ... to enrich uranium for fuel, let alone for bombs." The result may be that Iran is "more willing to give that up than their rhetoric suggests," says Cirincione. "Their sticking point may not be their commitment to enriching uranium, but the national pride that has been invested in this issue." http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0314/p01s03-wome.html

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San Diego Union-Tribune March 13, 2005 Egypt Aided Iraq's 1980s Weapons Program, CIA Group Says Data unsurprising to U.N. inspectors By Charles J. Hanley, Associated Press NEW YORK – Egypt secretly supplied crucial help – both technology and expert manpower – to the chemical weapons program of Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the 1980s, U.S. arms investigators have found. The CIA's Iraq Survey Group says Egyptian specialists helped the Iraqis make "technological leaps" on poison gas at the height of the Iran-Iraq War, when Baghdad used nerve agents to kill thousands of Iranian soldiers and Iranian and Iraqi civilians. The U.S. report is the most authoritative and detailed since such collaboration between the Arab nations was first rumored in the late 1980s. The Cairo government rejected those earlier allegations, and Egypt's Washington embassy reiterated that denial when asked by The Associated Press about the CIA report. But in AP interviews, U.N. arms inspectors who scoured Iraq's files and facilities in the 1990s corroborated the U.S. finding. In 1981, after the outbreak of war with Iran, Hussein's government paid Egypt $12 million "in return for assistance with production and storage of chemical weapons agents," the U.S. weapons hunters say in a little-noticed annex of their Comprehensive Report, a 350,000-word document issued in October. The Iraq Survey Group, led by CIA special adviser Charles A. Duelfer, had spent 20 months in 2003-04 searching for evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, cited by President Bush as the rationale for invading Iraq two years ago. The U.S. arms teams discredited Bush's claims, finding that Iraq had dismantled its advanced weapons programs under U.N. inspection in 1991. In the process, the Americans uncovered previously unreported details of the programs, such as the findings on Egypt and chemical arms. "During the early years, Egyptian scientists provided consultation, technology and oversight allowing rapid advances and technological leaps in weaponization," the Duelfer report says. From 1983 to 1988, the Iraqis repeatedly used mustard gas, tabun, sarin and possibly other chemical agents against the Iranians. Most notoriously, in 1988, Iraqi aircraft dropped sarin and mustard gas on Iranian-held villages in rebellious Iraqi Kurdistan, killing up to 5,000 Iraqi Kurdish civilians. The Duelfer report says that in the mid-1980s, Baghdad had invited Egyptian chemical weapons experts to Iraq to help with production of sarin, a nerve agent that when inhaled can lead to convulsions, paralysis, respiratory failure or possibly death within seconds. From 5 tons in 1984, Iraqi sarin production rose to 209 tons in 1987 and 394 tons in 1988, the report says. The Duelfer findings were unsurprising to experienced U.N. inspectors, who first entered Iraq in 1991, after it was defeated by a U.S.-led coalition in the Persian Gulf War, to destroy its chemical and biological weapons and dismantle its project to build nuclear bombs. "We were aware from back in 1991 that there was a link between Iraq and Egypt on chemical weapons," said Ron G. Manley of Britain, a former senior U.N. adviser on chemical weapons. He said the warhead inserts, known as an Egyptian design, were an early clue. The U.N. inspectors pinned down details of the connection through extensive searches of scientists' and government offices, downloading of Iraqi computer files and, finally, through "open and frank" discussions with officials in Egypt, said another expert familiar with the U.N. work. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050313/news_1n13saddam.html

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Washington Post March 15, 2005 Pg. 1 Va. Defense Facility Locked Down Similar Incident at Pentagon Spurs Queries About Coordination By Jamie Stockwell and Allan Lengel, Washington Post Staff Writers A sensor at a Department of Defense mailroom in Fairfax County signaled the presence of a suspicious biological substance yesterday, forcing hundreds of workers to remain inside three buildings for almost six hours. The lockdown came just hours after the mail facility at the Pentagon, about four miles away in Arlington, was evacuated and closed. The Pentagon took that action yesterday morning after tests conducted last week came back positive for anthrax, officials said. Later tests at the Pentagon were negative. Spokesmen for the Pentagon and the Fairfax fire department initially said the events at the Pentagon and in the Baileys Crossroads section of Fairfax were unrelated. But last night, a Virginia official said the events might be linked. In addition, emergency officials responding to the Fairfax incident said they were not aware of the Pentagon evacuation, causing Virginia's top homeland security official to say that coordination by the Defense Department would have to be reviewed. Authorities said that there is no imminent danger to the public, that Defense Department mail is irradiated and that new detection systems worked. But state and local officials remained concerned that 3 1/2 years after the attack on the Pentagon and anthrax mailings that affected local postal facilities, coordination did not work smoothly yesterday. "Clearly, the big question that's got to be answered is when did the DOD make the notification and did they make all appropriate notifications to make sure all federal, state and local players were aware of the problem?" said George W. Foresman, homeland security adviser to Gov. Mark R. Warner (D). As many as 800 people, a majority of whom work as government contractors, were kept inside their buildings on Leesburg Pike in Baileys Crossroads after a sensor was activated about 2:30 p.m., a fire department official said. Hazardous materials teams descended on the area and immediately secured the buildings, prohibiting people from leaving or entering, said Lt. Raul Castillo, a spokesman with the Fairfax fire department. He said initial tests indicated only that a "protein" was detected inside the eighth-floor mailroom at Skyline Five Place and added that a filter was taken to the U.S. Army Research Institute for Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick in Frederick County for further testing. A Pentagon spokesman said the Fairfax incident appeared to be unrelated. "There is no connection that I've been made aware of," Glenn Flood said. "I have received no information about that." But a source familiar with the incidents said that mail goes from the Pentagon site to the Baileys Crossroads site. This could account for the positive readings at both sites within a brief period. Fire officials began allowing people to leave the buildings about 7:30 p.m., after directing those inside over intercoms to wash their faces and hands. Fire officials said 42 people were decontaminated. "I was ready to walk out about 4 p.m., and they said to me, 'You can't leave because there's a hazmat situation,' " said Aaron Burrus, 22, of Stafford, who works for the Defense Department on the first floor. He said people passed the time walking around, talking to one another on their respective floors. He watched TV, but there was nothing to eat. "I don't think that anyone was afraid. We heard several rumors: anthrax positive; anthrax negative." Keith Kreger, a government contractor who works at Skyline Five Place, was nearing the end of his workday. But along with about 30 co-workers, Kreger was unable to leave. "I heard about it from an e-mail, that a suspicious letter was mailed to the mailroom. The ventilation system was shut off, which I found out about because our door slammed shut and then it got really hot," Kreger said in a telephone interview. An e-mail from the building's management was sent at 3:27 p.m. asking tenants to be aware of suspicious people or packages because of a "potential biological threat." After a while, employees inside Kreger's office grew bored. One of them opened a bottle of white wine that was left over from a holiday party. Others watched television and played video games. As the evening wore on, apprehension and fear set in. "Ever since Sept. 11, I've been more aware," Kreger said about three hours after the building was locked down. "It's definitely creepy." An announcement came over the building's intercom about 8 p.m. directing employees to the bathrooms on their floors. They were told to wash their faces and hands. The hot water was quickly used up, Kreger wrote in an e-mail a few minutes later. "People are starting to get a bit worried -- as am I," he wrote. "People in the halls don't even want to touch the door knobs to get back into our offices." At 8:30 p.m., Kreger's office, on the seventh floor, was allowed to leave. Castillo said that about 3,000 people work in the three buildings that were locked down and that as many as 800 were inside when an air filter designed to detect foreign agents was activated. An alarm sounded, and moments later, hazardous materials crews responded to the scene, with between 30 and 40 emergency technicians combing through the eight-story building to conduct tests, he said. Kreger and all those who left the building were given a sheet of instructions from the Fairfax County Health Department. They were told to wash their hands, face and other exposed skin, as well as jewelry and eyeglasses. They were to go straight home, take off their clothes and put them inside a plastic bag, which they were told to tie tightly and keep in a safe place. They were to shower and shampoo their hair. But before leaving the building, all of those who were locked down were asked to fill out a detailed form that questioned them about their location inside the building. They were told to await further instructions from their bosses or the health department, including whether they will need medication. Pentagon employees who may have come in contact with the mail also were being advised to take precautions, including providing nasal swabs for cultures and being provided with a three-day regimen of antibiotics. The irradiation to which the mail is subjected is designed to kill anthrax spores. Although the most recent reported tests at the Pentagon were negative, officials said they intended to conduct more detailed analysis as a precaution. A source familiar with the events said officials were concerned with the Pentagon's decision to distribute antibiotics to its mail workers without the knowledge of local officials dealing with the Fairfax incident. Staff writers Spencer S. Hsu, Tim Dwyer and Martin Weil contributed to this report. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33975-2005Mar14.html

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New York Times March 15, 2005 Pg. 1 News Analysis Bush Seeks to Ban Some Nations From All Nuclear Technology By David E. Sanger WASHINGTON, March 14 - Behind President Bush's recent shift in dealing with Iran's nuclear program lies a less visible goal: to rewrite, in effect, the main treaty governing the spread of nuclear technology, without actually renegotiating it. In their public statements and background briefings in recent days, Mr. Bush's aides have acknowledged that Iran appears to have the right - on paper, at least - to enrich uranium to produce electric power. But Mr. Bush has managed to convince his reluctant European allies that the only acceptable outcome of their negotiations with Iran is that it must give up that right. In what amounts to a reinterpretation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Mr. Bush now argues that there is a new class of nations that simply cannot be trusted with the technology to produce nuclear material even if the treaty itself makes no such distinction. So far the administration has not declared publicly that its larger goal beyond Iran is to remake a treaty whose intellectual roots date back to the Eisenhower administration, under the cold war banner of "Atoms for Peace." To state publicly that Iran is really a test case of Mr. Bush's broader effort, one senior administration official said, "would complicate what's already a pretty messy negotiation." But just three days before the White House announced its new approach to Iran - in which it allowed Europe to offer broader incentives in return for an agreement to ask the United Nations for sanctions if Iran refuses to give up the ability to make nuclear material - Mr. Bush issued a statement that left little doubt about where he was headed. The statement was advertised by the White House as a routine commemoration of the treaty's 35th anniversary, and a prelude to a meeting in May in New York to consider its future. It never mentioned Iran by name. But after lauding the past accomplishments of the treaty, also known as the N.P.T., in limiting the spread of nuclear arms, Mr. Bush went on to say, "We cannot allow rogue states that violate their commitments and defy the international community to undermine the N.P.T.'s fundamental role in strengthening international security. "We must therefore close the loopholes that allow states to produce nuclear materials that can be used to build bombs under the cover of civilian nuclear programs." On Sunday, his new national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, took the next step, making clear the connection to the current crisis with Iran. Yes, he said on CNN, the Iranians say their nuclear work is entirely for peaceful purposes. He cited no new evidence of a secret Iranian project to build a bomb, though that is what the Central Intelligence Agency and officials like Mr. Hadley insist is happening. (Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency say they join in the suspicion, but have no compelling evidence.) But Mr. Hadley emphasized that Iran's leaders "keep their secrets very well." They hid much of their enrichment activity from international inspectors for 18 years, then insisted that it was not really for weapons, he said. He said that "raises serious suspicions" about Iran's true intent. Now, he said, the Europeans have come around to the view that "the best guarantee is for them to permanently abandon their enrichment facilities." Mr. Bush could have called for renegotiating the treaty. But in background interviews, administration officials say they have neither the time nor the patience for that process. By the time all 189 signers come to an agreement, noted one official who left the White House recently: "The Iranians will look like the North Koreans, waving their bombs around. We can't afford to make that mistake again." (North Korea has declared it is no longer a party to the treaty, though it signed it. Israel, India and Pakistan never signed it.) After a visit to Tehran last week for a conference that Iran sponsored to explain its nuclear ambitions, George Perkovich, a nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, said he had concluded that Mr. Bush had the right instinct, but might not be taking the right approach. "The Iranians have decided to go on the offensive and simply assert their right, even if the treaty doesn't explicitly say that they have a right to enrich their own uranium," he said Monday. The view expressed by Iran's nuclear negotiators, he said, amounted to "We're not hiding it, we're not embarrassed by it, and no one is going to take our right away." Iran's leaders are still testing the Europeans, believing that in the end, Europe will decide to take the risk of letting Iran manufacture its own nuclear fuel rather than engage in a confrontation, Mr. Perkovich said. At the heart of Mr. Bush's concern is a fundamental flaw in the treaty. As long as nations allow inspections and declare their facilities and nuclear work, they get the atomic agency's seal of approval and, often, technical aid. But there is nothing to prevent a country, once it has learned how to enrich uranium or reprocess spent nuclear fuel rods, from withdrawing from the treaty and moving full-bore toward a bomb. North Korea did exactly that two years ago, and now says it reprocessed a huge cache of spent nuclear fuel to make it suitable for weapons. While American intelligence estimates vary, the consensus appears to be that that is enough to produce six or eight nuclear weapons. While Mr. Bush and the director general of the I.A.E.A., Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, have different proposals to deal with the problem, they agree that established nuclear nations should supply fuel to countries that need it. While this would help ensure that no nation could secretly produce bomb-grade fuel, smaller countries say they should not be dependent on the West or international consortiums for a crucial source of energy. A little more than a year ago, after the arrest of A. Q. Khan, the Pakistani nuclear engineer who helped arm Iran, North Korea and Libya, Mr. Bush announced a proposal: in the future, the world will not allow countries to manufacture nuclear fuel. He exempted any nation already producing it - meaning the United States, many European nations and Japan, among others. So far, he has done little to turn that proposal into legal language, and so far he has garnered almost no support. But the nuclear clock is ticking, and some of Mr. Bush's aides fear that Iran is heading the same way as North Korea did in the 1990's - playing out the negotiations while its scientists and engineers pick up skills, leaving open a withdrawal from the treaty. Alternatively, some in the C.I.A. believe that there are really two nuclear projects under way in Iran: a public one that inspectors visit, and a parallel, secret one on the country's military reservations. The Iranians deny that, but admit they have built huge tunnels at some crucial sites and buried other facilities altogether. Mr. Perkovich said that when Iranian officials were asked about that at the conference, they answered, "If you thought the Americans were going to bomb you, wouldn't you bury this stuff, too?" http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/15/politics/15treaty.html?hp&ex=1110949200&en=afa5e227075aa8ed&ei=5094 &partner=homepage

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GOVEXEC.COM March 15, 2005 Anthrax alarm closes three mail facilities By Daniel Pulliam [email protected] Anthrax detection systems at two Pentagon mailrooms sounded alarms Monday, resulting in the evacuation of four buildings and the shut down of the Postal Service's facility that handles government mail. Initial overnight tests on the samples from the Pentagon's Remote Delivery Facility in Arlington, Va., turned up positive, according to officials at the Health and Human Services Department. Tests on a second set of samples from the Pentagon-leased Skyline office complex in Falls Church, Va., discovered hours after the first alarm sounded, are not yet complete. The positive samples are being tested at the Army's Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md. Attempts to grow anthrax in Petri dishes will determine whether the spores are capable of causing disease. Results from this type of test usually take 24 to 48 hours, but an HHS spokesman said results could be available later today. The Skyline office complex, located at 5111 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church, remains closed along with the Remote Delivery Facility, but county officials said the general public is not at risk of exposure. About 275 Defense Department workers were potentially affected and 200 postal workers. Defense employees who might have come into contact with anthrax are being asked to provide nasal swabs and are being given a three-day regimen of antibiotics. Initial anthrax symptoms - which usually do not take effect for several days - include fever, sweats and chills. HHS spokesman Bill Hall said the only material that shows the possible existence of anthrax spores is the material from the Pentagon's Remote Delivery Facility. Since all government mail is radiated to kill bacteria, the detection of anthrax does not necessarily mean that anthrax was alive. Mailroom bacteria censors are designed to detect material that might or might not be dangerous, Hall said. More precise tests that examine the material's DNA structure, known as polymerase chain reaction testing, proved that the material in the Remote Delivery Facility was anthrax. "There's no identified piece of mail, no powder," Hall said. "All we have is the censors going off." Postal Service spokesman Gerry McKiernan said government workers at the now closed Post Office facility, but there was no evidence of anthrax. While the censors at the Defense mail facilities sounded the alarm, Postal Service censors at the facility that sends mail to the Pentagon did not go off. The Defense mail facilities also handle interoffice mail and packages from outside couriers. "We don't know if it was a piece of mail that caused [the Pentagon censors] to go off," McKiernan said. "Nothing is amiss and nobody is sick. We don't have any reason to believe anybody has been contaminated." According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, anthrax is caused by a bacterium that forms spores known as Bacillus anthracis. Humans become contaminated with anthrax by handling products from infected animals, eating undercooked meat from infected animals or by breathing anthrax spores. Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, anthrax was deliberately spread throughout the U.S. postal system in letters containing the anthrax powder and lead to 22 cases of anthrax infection and five deaths. CDC spokesman Llelwyn Grant said the agency is consulting with the Postal Service on doing environmental sampling at the facility that handles government mail. They are also providing postal workers possibly exposed to anthrax with safety recommendations. "Based on the information made available to the CDC, we feel that the risk to postal workers is low, but we can't say that there is zero risk," Grant said. "Based on this information we believe it is prudent to take precautionary steps." http://govexec.com/dailyfed/0305/031505p1.htm

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