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US identifies sites linking bin Laden to bioweapons

The US has identified sites in Afghanistan that are suspected of involvement in Osama bin Laden's efforts to acquire and produce chemical and biological weapons, but none have been bombed since the military campaign began, according to American military and intelligence officials.

American intelligence officials believe that al-Qaeda may already have produced small quantities of cyanide gas at a crude chemical weapons research laboratory in Derunta, a village near the eastern city of Jalalabad.

Officials say reports of the gas production provide the strongest indication they have received of al-Qaeda's efforts to develop chemical weapons.

Cyanide gas can be used to kill small numbers of people, but it is not easily deployed on a large scale, officials say. The intelligence reports indicating cyanide gas production bolster the US intelligence community's overall assessment that al-Qaeda is eager to obtain weapons of mass destruction, but so far has developed only crude capabilities, several officials said.

Fertilizer plant

In addition to the Derunta site, American intelligence and military officials say a fertilizer plant in Mazar-i-Sharif, which the Northern Alliance captured on Friday, had been under the control of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Intelligence analysts suspected that al-Qaeda had been interested in the plant because it could be used to produce biological or chemical weapons.

An anthrax-vaccine site in Kabul has also raised concerns among intelligence analysts. The International Committee of the Red Cross had been believed to be operating the plant, which was established to produce vaccine for livestock in Afghanistan to protect them from anthrax.

But American intelligence officials now say they do not believe the Red Cross controls the site, and Red Cross officials acknowledge that while it has provided funds for the plant, it is being operated by the Taliban's Ministry of Agriculture.

A senior State Department official said that American experts had told him it would be difficult for al-Qaeda to use the anthrax-vaccine plant to produce anthrax weapons, and Red Cross officials have said the material produced in the laboratory is harmless. But American officials say they still believe that it is important to deny al-Qaeda operatives access to such a laboratory and any equipment it might contain.

Senior officials at the White House, the Pentagon and the CIA refused to say why the suspect sites have not been bombed one month into the American military campaign. White House officials declined to comment when asked if the decision not to bomb the sites represented a high-level decision by the administration.

But the strategy seems at odds with US President George W. Bush's recent statements about the threat posed by al-Qaeda's efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction. In a speech on Tuesday, the president warned that al-Qaeda was "seeking chemical, biological and nuclear weapons," and said that if the group acquired such weapons it would represent "a threat to every nation and, eventually, to civilization itself."

Despite the president's statements, the decision not to strike the suspect sites appears to result from a deep sense of caution among senior government officials about the quality of the intelligence collected about the sites, as well as the possible unintended political and diplomatic consequences of attacks on dual-use facilities.

Collecting intelligence about facilities of this sort is an inexact science at best; intelligence officials and policy-makers have learned from past mistakes to be wary when using such information. After the terrorist bombings of two American embassies in East Africa in August 1998, then-president Clinton ordered cruise-missile strikes on the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum, Sudan, which officials believed was connected to al-Qaeda.

But the US was heavily criticized after it became clear that the evidence linking the plant to al-Qaeda was weak, and that the CIA had been unaware that the plant's ownership had changed well before the cruise missile attack.

US embarrassment

The US bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, during the Kosovo war in 1999 also haunts the CIA; analysts mistakenly believed that the building was the headquarters of a Yugoslav government agency involved in weapons proliferation.

Further, during the Persian Gulf War, US officials engaged in strenuous debates over what to do about sites in Iraq that were suspected of involvement in Saddam Hussein's secret program to develop weapons of mass destruction. There was concern about the accuracy of the intelligence, and also about whether bombing raids would release dangerous chemicals or biological weapons into the atmosphere. After the war, American officials realized that in many cases their information had been incorrect and they had bombed the wrong sites, while many of the real weapons facilities had gone unscathed.

One official said the Bush administration was worried that complaints might be made charging that the US was destroying the public health and agricultural sites of Afghanistan. The official added that such dual-use targets -- which could be employed to make fertilizer and vaccines, or chemical weapons and anthrax -- were being avoided for that reason.
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