Interesting...

-
JDW

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dan S <dan@...>
To: BIOWAR-List <BIOWAR-L@...>
Subject: [BIOWAR] Iraqi scientists 'helping Libyan germ warfare'
X-mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.2106.4

From The Times, January 6 1998
URL:
http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/98/01/06/timfgnmid02002.html?11240
27
-

Iraqi scientists 'helping Libyan germ warfare'

BY MICHAEL EVANS
DEFENCE CORRESPONDENT

COLONEL Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, is receiving extensive help from
Iraqi scientists in a covert programme to develop biological weapons,
according to Western intelligence sources.

With the international community focusing its diplomatic and investigative
efforts on Iraq's biological warfare research projects, the Libyans have
been advancing their own programme at laboratories outside Tripoli.

The latest intelligence reports indicate that up to a dozen Iraqi
scientists, who had been involved in Baghdad's biological research, have
transferred to the Libyan programme and are now living in Tripoli under a
special arrangement agreed between Libya and Iraq about seven months ago.
The dozen scientists have joined other Iraqi researchers who have been in
Libya since the 1991 Gulf War.

The Libyan biological warfare programme is believed to be codenamed Ibn
Hayan. The intelligence sources said they believed the arrival of Iraqi
scientists in Tripoli was to help Libya to move more quickly from the
research and development phase to the production of weapons. The deal
between Libya and Iraq may have been signed last May during a visit to
Baghdad by members of a Libyan industrialists' organisation.

Western intelligence services, which are keeping an increasingly close watch
on the threatened proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle
East, believe the Iraqi scientists have been employed to help the Libyans to
develop an extensive complex called General Health Laboratories which is
located in the Tripoli area.

When Colonel Gaddafi began developing chemical weapons in the late 1980s and
early 1990s, he claimed that a huge plant under construction at Rabta, south
of Tripoli, was for the manufacture of pharmaceutical products. When the
United States produced evidence that it was a chemical weapons factory, the
Libyan leader was forced to mothball the building.

Now it seems he is attempting to develop a biological warfare complex under
the guise of a medical facility.

The intelligence sources said the project was being run by the Libyan
Ministry of Defence, which reports directly to Colonel Gaddafi. The
equipment and laboratory instruments required for the programme are believed
to have been purchased from India, China and Serbia.

However, the Defence Ministry is never involved in the deals. According to
the sources, a number of different organisations, including Libyan
universities and laboratories attached to the Libyan ministries of
agriculture and health, have been engaged in making "ostensibly innocent
purchases".

The items bought are often dual-use diagnostic and laboratory materials and
equipment, such as freeze driers, incubators, amino-acid analysers and kits
for the identification of toxins.

The international embargo imposed in 1991 makes it difficult for Libya to
get assistance from European countries for the development of the "general
health" laboratories, which is why Iraq has now become the most important
source of scientific support.




***********************************************************************
BIOWAR-L Biowar/Bioterrorism/Toxins Mailing List
To unsubscribe or subscribe: send a message to majordomo@...
with the following text: unsubscribe BIOWAR-L or subscribe BIOWAR-L.
Post to: <BIOWAR-L@...>. Archive:
<http://www.sonic.net/~west/digest.htm>. BIOWAR Web site:
<http://www.sonic.net/~west/biowar.htm>. -Wes Thomas <west@...>