US sends team to East Africa to crack down on 'germ terrorism' threat
Source:Telegraph
A team of Pentagon arms control experts is being sent to East Africa to warn of growing threats that al-Qaeda could make biological weapons with deadly germs stolen from insecure laboratories.
The Pentagon arms control experts team includes US Senator Richard Lugar, who spearheaded programmes to destroy the former Soviet Union's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons after 1991 Photo: AP
The panel, including Kenneth Myers, the director of the Pentagon's Threat Reduction Agency, will inspect facilities in Kenya and Uganda where some of the world's most infectious diseases are stored and studied.
Defence analysts are increasingly concerned that the laboratories' security is too weak to withstand the increasing threat from regional terror groups, including al-Qaeda, who are hunting for ingredients for biological weapons.
The team includes Richard Lugar, the Republican senator who spearheaded programmes to destroy the former Soviet Union's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons after 1991.
Meetings are planned with senior officials from the Kenyan and Ugandan governments to warn of the growing threat of bioterrorism, and to advise on stronger security systems.
"This is urgent work," said Sen Lugar, former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
"A number of African nations with active terrorist cells have unsecured facilities that are tracking and sometimes handling some of the deadliest pathogens on Earth, including Ebola, Marburg, Rift Valley Fever and plague.
"These can be made into horrible weapons aimed at our troops, our friends and allies, and even the American public. This is a threat we cannot ignore."
Research laboratories in Africa often lack basic security systems and diseases kept to be studied can be poorly stored and catalogued, meaning thefts would be almost impossible to detect or quantify.
"African nations do not have the surveillance, detection, diagnosis, and reporting capacities to deal with the potential for global bioterrorism," Sen Lugar said.
Details of the visit, scheduled to start on Tuesday, have not been released. A spokesman for Kenya's government did not comment, apart from to say the team would be "welcomed" and assisted wherever necessary. Uganda's government spokesman could not be reached.
Sen Lugar co-directed the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction programme, set up in 1991 as the Soviet Union collapsed, which has since helped remove all nuclear weapons from Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
Investigators found that Soviet scientists had used African diseases to make biological weapons during the Cold War.
"Those weapons are being destroyed," said Sen Lugar. "Now we have to secure their sources." But the threat from chemical warfare is now very different, the Indiana Senator told a conference on science and international security in Madrid on Monday.
"The footprint of weapons-producing laboratories and the size of today's "strategic" weapons grow smaller every day," he said.
"A delivery system may be as mundane as a commercial cargo carrier. In the case of infectious pathogens, the delivery system could be an individual human being. Discovering potential WMD threats is far more challenging."
"This is urgent work," said Sen Lugar, former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
"A number of African nations with active terrorist cells have unsecured facilities that are tracking and sometimes handling some of the deadliest pathogens on Earth, including Ebola, Marburg, Rift Valley Fever and plague.
"These can be made into horrible weapons aimed at our troops, our friends and allies, and even the American public. This is a threat we cannot ignore."
Research laboratories in Africa often lack basic security systems and diseases kept to be studied can be poorly stored and catalogued, meaning thefts would be almost impossible to detect or quantify.
"African nations do not have the surveillance, detection, diagnosis, and reporting capacities to deal with the potential for global bioterrorism," Sen Lugar said.
Details of the visit, scheduled to start on Tuesday, have not been released. A spokesman for Kenya's government did not comment, apart from to say the team would be "welcomed" and assisted wherever necessary. Uganda's government spokesman could not be reached.
Sen Lugar co-directed the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction programme, set up in 1991 as the Soviet Union collapsed, which has since helped remove all nuclear weapons from Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
Investigators found that Soviet scientists had used African diseases to make biological weapons during the Cold War.
"Those weapons are being destroyed," said Sen Lugar. "Now we have to secure their sources." But the threat from chemical warfare is now very different, the Indiana Senator told a conference on science and international security in Madrid on Monday.
"The footprint of weapons-producing laboratories and the size of today's "strategic" weapons grow smaller every day," he said.
"A delivery system may be as mundane as a commercial cargo carrier. In the case of infectious pathogens, the delivery system could be an individual human being. Discovering potential WMD threats is far more challenging."
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