Scientists labor to scrap Soviet-era biowarfare plant

Biological weapons engineers who worked to create the world's biggest anthrax-manufacturing plant are now laboring to dismantle it -- and wondering whether they'll find jobs again.

The scrapping of the germ-warfare plant at the Stepnogorsk Scientific Experimental and Production Base is being carried out under the US Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. But scientists at the Soviet-era plant say another promised part of the US-funded program -- conversion of the plant to civilian use -- seems to have been shelved.

"There have been no investments, no arrangements for long-term civilian production," said Yuri Rufov, director of Biomedpreparat, the main successor.

"We are fulfilling our obligations in liquidating all the equipment that could be used for germ weapons production," he said. "Now it is time for the United States to give us real support in developing a peaceful biotechnology industry here."

A former director of the Stepnogorsk plant, Vladimir Bugreyev, said most of the facility's scientists left for Russia in 1992 and 1993. As far as he knows, none have gone elsewhere.

Western officials have long expressed concern that Iran, Iraq, Syria and Libya, which are all believed to have germ-warfare programs, might try to hire some of the scientists.

A decade ago, when the Soviet Union was breaking up and the Cold War was ending, this town on the wind-swept steppes of northern Kazakstan wasn't listed on Soviet maps.

It was located inside a closed military zone where hundreds of scientists labored to develop lethal strains of biological weapons. It had the capacity to produce 330 tonnes of weapons-grade anthrax over a 10-month period, enough to destroy a large portion of the population of the US.

The facility's underground bunkers could hold up to 550 tonnes of anthrax powder, as well as equipment for loading the germs into bombs and missile warheads.

The plant was built starting in 1982 to replace a Soviet factory in the city of Sverdlovsk in the Ural Mountains, now Yekaterinburg, that accidentally released anthrax into the air in 1979, killing about 70 people. Boris Yeltsin, then the local Communist Party boss, has said he did not know about the germ-warfare facility at the time.

The Stepnogorsk plant was in violation of the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention, which the Soviet Union signed in 1972. It wasn't until 1992 that Yeltsin, by then Russia's president, acknowledged the violation.

Russia cut off funding for biological weapons in 1991 and 1992. A year later, the Stepnogorsk plant was reorganized for civilian use and renamed Biomedpreparat.

About 500 bioweapons engineers worked here in 1990; today, just 152 employees work in two civilian laboratories spun out of the Stepnogorsk weapons plant. Many are mechanics and technicians who are dismantling the equipment.

"There is nothing here, nothing left and nothing going on," director Rufov said. "Everything is in the past."

A US-funded, US$5.8 million joint venture to manufacture vitamins, antibiotics and other pharmaceutical projects never got off the ground, and equipment sent to Stepnogorsk has been mothballed.

"The equipment is worn out and outdated and didn't come with any supporting technical maintenance documentation," Rufov said bitterly.

US officials say they are committed to developing the commercial potential at Stepnogorsk, but point to barriers to foreign investment. The site is remote -- 160km from Kazakstan's new capital Astana. Buildings are in poor condition and the plant could be contaminated.