[A-List] US imperialism: Iraq, smallpox

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Smallpox virus sold to Iraq, says defector
IAN BRUCE
The Herald, 4 December 2002

A RENEGADE Russian scientist may have sold Iraq a virulent form of smallpox
which could make the vaccines being stockpiled by Britain and the US to
protect their populations useless in the event of a terrorist biowar attack,
intelligence sources claimed yesterday.

The CIA said it is investigating claims by an Iraqi defector that Dr Nelja
Maltseva, a virologist who worked for 30 years at Moscow's Research
Institute for Viral Preparations, supplied the ultra-lethal smallpox strain
to Saddam's regime in 1990.

The threat is being taken seriously enough for President George W Bush to be
briefed on its implications on the eve of a decision this week to authorise
voluntary inoculation of 500,000 key health workers and order more than
500,000 soldiers, sailors and airmen likely to take part in a campaign
against Iraq to submit to the protective jabs.

Dr Maltseva, who died two years ago, is known to have visited Baghdad
several times. She had access to a Soviet-era stock of 120 different strains
of smallpox stored at the Moscow institute, some of which are believed to
have been genetically altered to make them more useable as weapons.

It is feared the smallpox was sold to Iraq when the institute for which Dr
Maltseva worked fell on hard times after the fall of communism.

A UK defence ministry source said last night: "The CIA information is
disturbing, but still under investigation. There is little point in
panicking over something which may or may not be true."