Nobody knows bin Laden's address

Valentin Kunin RIA Novosti Moscow

The British Foreign Office has issued a statement claiming that the government has evidence that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization tried to make a "dirty bomb" in the late 1990s. Tony Blair's Cabinet was presented with documents received by British intelligence showing that al-Qaeda had bought radioactive isotopes, as well as instructions detailing how to use a "dirty bomb."

This information directly echoes last year's media reports that, after the US-led operation in Afghanistan, the CIA had discovered a blueprint for a nuclear device in a Kabul building used by al-Qaeda. Reports often appeared in the past about black market attempts by al-Qaeda to get hold of portable nuclear warheads (so-called nuclear briefcases) that were developed during the Cold War by both the United States and the Soviet Union.

Nevertheless, so far both experts and intelligence services have avoided making any conclusions about al-Qaeda's nuclear capacity. Specialists neither deny that the organization, with its huge financial resources, could well find people to create a bomb or buy one for them.

At any rate, the CIA intercepted a transmission made by a close bin Laden associate threatening to organize a second Hiroshima in the U.S. It is also known that bin Laden has talked about the possibility of obtaining a nuclear weapon for his religious cause.

He added, "how we use it is our business." The fact that these nuclear ambitions are not restricted to al-Qaeda alone is particularly alarming. Experts believe that no fewer than a dozen different extremist groups operating in the Middle East and southeast Asia are trying to obtain mini-warheads.

If the possibility of terrorists using nuclear weapons remains hypothetical at the moment, then attacks with other weapons of mass destruction, primarily chemical and biological ones, are already a fact. The line was crossed seven years ago in March 1995, when members of the Aum Shinrikyo extremist group released the nerve gas, sarin, into the Tokyo underground. Twelve people were killed and about 5,000 needed hospital treatment for the effects of poisoning.

Since then, no attacks with the use of poisonous substances have been repeated. However, according to secret services in a series of countries, terrorists have in no way renounced this form of warfare. In the years since the Tokyo attack, terrorist organizations have been actively stockpiling such resources. There are reports that al-Qaeda has anthrax strains, samples of the deadly botulinus toxin and the plague.

This information is directly corroborated by several threats made by bin Laden himself to use chemical and biological weapons against infidels "if needed." These threats can hardly be considered as mere bluffing. As opposed to nuclear weapons, chemical and biological ones can be obtained with consummate ease.

Many of their components can be bought at open markets, while several sources, including the Internet, describe how to prepare them.

The events of the last few months allow one absolutely justifiably to talk about a sharp growth in the desires of extremist groups to carry out large-scale terrorist attacks involving the use of chemical weapons.

It all started last November with the arrest in Britain of a group of Islamic militants planning to release cyanide at several tube stations.

A month later, French law-enforcers arrested four refugees from North Africa in a Paris apartment containing chemical preparations, including highly poisonous substances. When questioned, the men confessed that they had been planning to carry out a series of attacks in the French capital, including in the metro.

Another three weeks passed, and attention once again focused on London, where more North African refugees were arrested for trying to produce the lethal poison, ricine. It became clear that the groups arrested in London and Paris had closely co-operated with al-Qaeda, undergone training in bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan, and, in essence, were cells of his organization. All these incidents highlight two evident points.

Firstly, terrorism with weapons of mass destruction is taking on an altogether more terrifying form. Secondly, obviously, international terrorism will sooner or later use these weapons, which could claim tens of thousands of victims.

The difficulty of the situation lies in the fact that this form of warfare is virtually impossible to defeat, as if one state chooses to launch an attack using weapons of mass destruction, then it can expect a retaliatory strike of the same kind. But no one knows where bin Laden lives.