Iraqi Germ Warfare Called Still a Threat

CHICAGO — Iraq could reassemble its germ warfare program within six months with a still-intact scientific team working with freeze-dried organisms, a former U.N. investigator said in a report published Tuesday.

“The work force of more than 200 persons who staffed Iraq’s biological warfare program is intact,” Raymond Zilinskas said.

“Iraq’s civilian biotechnological infrastructure, comprising more than 80 research, development and production facilities, is whole and well equipped,” he added.

“It is prudent to assume that the Iraqis retain hidden stores of freeze-dried organisms from its former warfare program,” he said.

Zilinskas was a member of the U.N. investigative team that along with the International Atomic Energy Agency has been overseeing the scrapping of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction under the 1991 Persian Gulf War cease-fire. He is a researcher at the Center for Public Issues in Biotechnology at the University of Maryland.

His report was published in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Assn.--an issue about biological warfare problems.

Zilinskas said Iraq began its germ warfare program in earnest in 1985 and developed anthrax, botulinus toxin--the most toxic chemical known to science--and a fungal strain for use against crops.