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Iraq Reiterates No Link With Anthrax in US
Iraq on Thursday denied again any connection with the anthrax attacks in the United States and condemned those "sinister" claims trying to link Iraq with the biochemical attacks in the US.
"Connecting Iraq with those events is sinister and baseless. Iraq has nothing to do with all what has happened in the US from September 11 till now," said Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz in an interview with the Cable News Network (CNN).
"We worked on anthrax in the 1980s, and in the 1990s we destroyed all our anthrax assets. They were not high-grade and that is very well-known, because there were inspections in Iraq for seven and half years," Aziz said.
United Nations arms inspectors pulled out of Iraq shortly before the U.S. and Britain launched air strikes in December 1998, and Iraq has since barred the arms inspectors from returning to the country.
Aziz's remarks came after the Washington Post reported Thursday that only Iraq, the former Soviet Union and the U.S. were believed to have been capable of making the anthrax spores that contaminated the air in a U.S. Senate office last week.
The Washington Post report said the three nations were the only countries known to have developed the kind of additives that allow anthrax spores to remain suspended in the air, and thus became more easily inhaled and more deadly.
Iraqi officials and the media had strongly denied any involvement with the anthrax bacteria in the U.S..
Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department acknowledged on Monday that it knew of no clear link between Iraq and the U.S. anthrax.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, when asked by CNN on Monday if Iraq might be involved in the anthrax attacks, said:" I do not know ... So rather than speculate as to what kind of anthrax it was, what possible sources of such anthrax could be, I think I will just leave that at the hands of very qualified people, such as FBI, Center for Disease Control ..."
So far three people in the U.S. have died of anthrax and more than 10 others tested positive.
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