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WASHINGTON - Iran's opposition in exile accused President Mohammad Khatami on Tuesday of accelerating development of a secret biological weapons program despite his country's ratification of the biological weapons treaty.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran described four government centers it said are involved in biological weapons development and six biological research centers. It said Russian, Ukrainian and other former Soviet scientists have been working at some of the facilities.
U.S. officials have long believed that Iran has an offensive biological program. The State Department says the program has been pursued at least since the Iran-Iraq war in the early 1980s. "And the pace of Iran's biological weapons program probably has increased in recent years, since the 1995 revelation about the extent of Iraq's biological weapons system," an official said Tuesday.
Private arms control analysts also have raised concerns about Iran's potential for developing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
"Khatami's moderation is a myth," said Soona Samsami, resistance council U.S. representative, at a news conference. "Clearly, as far as weapons of mass destruction are concerned, Khatami is following in the footsteps of his predecessors and has launched an all-out effort to expand the program."
Samsami said the Defense Ministry Special
Industries oversees biological and germ warfare under the office of the
president and has 4,000 employees. Among facilities she named were Tehran's
Pasteur Institute and the Razi Serum Institute in Hessarak, both set up
to develop veterinary vaccines.
Iranian Opposition Alleges Huge Bio-Warfare Program In Tehran, Agence France Presse, January 26
WASHINGTON - An Iranian opposition group on Tuesday accused Tehran of pursuing a massive biological and chemical warfare program employing thousands of people including foreign experts.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran said the program had intensified in recent months despite the election last year of President Mohammad Khatami.
The group said the program, spread over various governmental offices, universities and laboratories, had succeeded in producing three types of biological weapons and would soon be able to make them in mass quantities.
"Khatami's moderation is a myth," she said, claiming that the alleged coordinating office for the program, the Science and Technology Group within the Office of the President, had been set up in his tenure for the sole purpose of producing such weapons.
Samsami and two scientists affiliated with the resistance council said information they obtained from dissident sources in Iran showed that Tehran is now making aflatoxin, a deadly agent that infects the liver, anthrax and VX nerve gas.
They said that Iranian scientists, working with at least 18 Russian chemical weapons experts, lacked only the computerized controllers that regulate the amount of various ingredients to the agents to begin mass production.
The council contended that Iran's recent
missile tests conducted was evidence that the government was planning to
weaponize the chemical and biological agents.
Iranian Revolution, 20 Years On..., Agence France Presse, January 26
TEHRAN - Twenty years after the revolution, Iran's mere demography is a veritable challenge to defenders of tradition: the population is one of the youngest in the world, nearly half born after 1979 and many of whom remember neither the Shah nor Khomeini.
Keen on cultural opening and travel, fascinated by football, the internet and satellite television, many young people may turn out to be no more than a mere spectator of the anniversary of a revolution in which their parents played the leading roles.
Social contradictions are becoming stark: as orthodox-minded ayatollahs warn of the "dangers" of satellite television and the internet to public morality, cybercafes are opening in Tehran and dishes mushroom on roofs.
But the Islamic Republic remains a theocratic state, led by a supreme religious authority, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose powers exceed those of the government itself.
The Shiite clergy dominate the state apparatus: the president, parliamentary speaker, head of the judiciary and key intelligence and interior ministers are clerics.
A somewhat scattered and often confusing power structure also includes a variety of councils and committees headed by clerics.
Twenty years on, Iran remains a country where key decisions are taken by senior clergymen, meeting behind closed doors in the secretive seminaries of Qom, the sanctuary of religious power in Iran.