UN: Al Qaeda Has Decided to Use Chemical and Bio weapons

A confidential report by a UN panel of experts finds that the only thing holding al Qaeda back from using chemical and biological weapons is its lack of technical know-how. But the decision has already been taken to use them in forthcoming attacks.
Because of the lack of this technical ability, the panel believes Osama bin Laden’s organization is now focusing on developing new conventional explosive devices such as bombs that can evade scanners.
The experts cite no specific new evidence apart from the recent discovery of several canisters of unidentified chemicals and possible residues of a “tetanus virus-carrying chemical” and a bio-terror manual in a police raid on a Jemaa Islamiyah hideout in the southern Philippines.
But the risk of terrorist using weapons of mass destruction continues to grow.
The expert group adds al Qaeda ideology is spreading worldwide and has found fertile ground in Iraq.
The funding is there for al Qaeda to continue developing its WMD capabilities. According to the UN report, despite progress made towards cutting off al-Qaeda financing, the money continues to flow through the serious loopholes of “charities, deep pocket donors, business and the drug trade.” The group has shifted its financial activities to areas in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia that can’t track this activity. But sanctions are also failing because many governments refuse to add names to the sanctions list. Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen arrested individuals linked al Qaeda and the Taliban but did not submit their names for the sanctions list. The group called on the Security Council to adopt a resolution requiring all 191 members to enforce sanctions.
In a separate report, a panel of outside experts warns the CIA that technology emanating from genomic research could produce diseases “worse than any known to man” and “the most frightening” biological weapons. The report titled “The Darker Bioweapons Future” just published summed up a January workshop which discussed with the CIA potential threats from new biological weapons.
Growth in biotechnology and a knowledge explosion due to the genomic revolution which provided an understanding of genes could be used in unpredictable ways, say the experts. The same science that may cure some of our worst diseases could be used to create the world’s most frightening weapons – “designer” warfare agents created to be antibiotic resistant or evade immune response, weaponized gene therapy vectors or a “stealth” virus that could lie dormant inside the victim until triggered.
The experts warned that traditional intelligence methods could prove inadequate to deal with this development. Detection will increasingly depend on human intelligence and require a closer working relationship between intelligence and the science community. One panelist proposed the bioscience community act as a “living sensor web” at international conferences, university labs and informal networks to identity and alert about new technical advances with weaponization potential.
debkafile‘s terrorism experts add: These reports have spurred Washington’s efforts to lay hands on al Qaeda’s biological weapons expert, the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi who received medical treatment in Baghdad during his flight from Afghanistan and trained with Saddam Hussein’s intelligence officers in the use of biological and chemical weapons at an Ansar al Islam facility in northern Iraq. At present, Zarqawi is in Iran under Iranian Revolutionary Guards protection. Jordanian king Abdullah will be traveling to Tehran in the next few days. He will make a second effort to persuade the Iranians to surrender Zarqawi, who is under sentence of death in the kingdom for his role in the failed Millennium Plot against Western targets in Amman. Earlier this year, the monarch requested his extradition from Tehran in vain.