Copyright 2003 Agence France Presse  
Agence France Presse
February 2, 2003 Sunday
SECTION: International News

LENGTH: 450 words

HEADLINE: Iraq denies possessing mobile labs to produce bio weapons

DATELINE: BAGHDAD, Feb 2

BODY:
Iraq denied on Sunday a magazine report attributed to German intelligence saying Baghdad has mobile laboratories capable of developing and producing chemical and biological weapons.

"These allegations are absolutely incorrect, they are lies," Hosam Mohammed Amin, head of the National Monitoring Directorate which liases with UN inspectors in Baghdad, told a press conference.

"I think that they are one of the American and British mass media (attempts) ... to create suspicions around the Iraqi position in implementing the Security Council resolutions," he said.

Amin explained that "indeed Iraq has two laboratories, two (mobile) laboratories for inspecting foodstuff, and they belong to the ministry of trade and they are declared in the Iraqi (arms) declaration" to the United Nations.

"The first laboratory was imported last year from a British company in accordance with the Memorandum of Understanding (under the UN regulated oil-for-food program) and it is intended to be used to analyze and test the foodstuff which is imported in accordance to the memorandum," he said.

"The specifications of the second one did not meet the requirements of the ministry of trade and will be returned to the manufacturer," he said.

"Those two laboratories were visited and inspected by the biological teams on January 18," he said, referring to UN inspectors who resumed their field checks in Iraq in late November.

Amin said the inspectors "took 10 swabs to make sure that no proscribed activities have been conducted on those laboratories and they were happy with the results."

"All those allegations are incorrect and absolute lies and behind them are political purposes," he added.

The German weekly Focus said in a report to be published Monday that Germany's intelligence services believed Iraq had mobile laboratories capable of developing and producing chemical and biological weapons.

The laboratories are hidden in trucks that appear completely normal from the outside, Focus magazine said, quoting the results of an investigation by the intelligence service, BND.

Focus said BND officials gave details about the laboratories to the foreign affairs committee of the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, in November.

The head of the BND, August Hanning, told the deputies the Iraqi government had even bought equipment for the laboratories in Germany, Focus said. He said Baghdad had also attempted to buy material in Germany to build missiles.

In a rare statement, the BND on Friday said it had, "with the government's consent, transmitted to the UN weapons inspectors information ... it had gathered about Iraq."

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Iraq-Germany-bioweapons

LOAD-DATE: February 3, 2003