Terrorists 'have the will to use dirty bomb'
Terrorists 'have the will to use dirty bomb'
Steven Gutkin, Associated Press, Jakarta
Terrorists have the will and "a reasonable amount" of expertise to employ a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapon and will do so if they acquire the necessary materials, the U.S. State Department's top antiterror official said.
J. Cofer Black, U.S. coordinator for counterterrorism with a rank of ambassador at large, also said that despite the arrest or killing of more than two-thirds of the al-Qaeda leadership of the Sept. 11, 2001, period, the group remains "very dangerous."
Speaking to The Associated Press in Jakarta on Saturday, Black said U.S. officials are "killing ourselves" to prevent a "dirty bomb" and other unconventional weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists, but said the threat remains.
"We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that a number of these groups if they had it would use it," said Black, who accompanied U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft to an Asia-Pacific antiterror summit on the Indonesian island of Bali last week.
"They've got the will. A lot of these guys seek the expertise, and there's a reasonable amount of that out there, but what you're really looking for is the coming together of all the factors: the will, the expertise and the materials," he said.
Authorities say terrorists could create a "dirty bomb" by using conventional explosives to disperse a plume of radioactive dust over a city. Unlike a nuclear weapon, a dirty bomb would not ignite an atomic chain reaction and would not require highly enriched uranium or plutonium, which are normally hard to obtain. The materials could be a lower-grade isotope, like those used in medicine or research.
Black's comments follow recent revelations that the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, had sold equipment related to centrifuges, used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons, to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
Experts say the same black market that enabled those countries to obtain nuclear weapons technology might also have supplied bomb components or plans to terrorists.
"If al-Qaeda were to put together a radiological device, they're going to use it. We know that they have the determination, they've killed large numbers before, their objective is to kill more, they're doing everything they can to acquire this type of weapon and we are working to try to prevent it," Black said.
He said that antiterror officials use the initials CBRN to rank the threats' order of probability: "chemical, bacteriological, radiological and nuclear - chemical the most likely and nuclear the least."
Unless the U.S. government quickly develops a coherent strategy to fight the threat, "a nuclear terrorist attack on the United States will be more likely than not in the decade ahead," wrote Harvard University's Graham Allison in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs magazine.
According to the best estimates, the global nuclear inventory includes more than 30,000 nuclear weapons and enough highly enriched uranium and plutonium to build 240,000 more, wrote Allison, a former assistant U.S. secretary of defense.
"Hundreds of these weapons are currently stored in conditions that leave them vulnerable to theft by determined criminals, who would then sell them to terrorists," he wrote.
Al-Qaeda's apparent interest in acquiring nuclear technology came to the fore in 2001 when two Pakistani nuclear scientists were arrested after meeting Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan on suspicion of giving away secrets. The scientists were later released without being charged.
Al-Qaeda, said Black, has been badly damaged since Sept. 11, 2001, and now has "less leadership personnel with which to plan and validate operations" but "that still doesn't stop them from being very dangerous."
"We are concerned about the next generation, guys seven to 12 years younger, who are flush with disturbed radical emotion but less well trained," he said.
Ministers and other senior officials from more than two dozen countries attending last week's antiterror summit on Bali - site of a devastating attack in 2002 by the al-Qaeda linked Jamaah Islamiyah terror group - called on Asia-Pacific states to work to prevent the illegal movement of nuclear, chemical and biological materials.
But delegates said the threat of unconventional weapons falling into the hands of terrorists was not discussed at any length during the two-day event.
Black said he believed Jamaah Islamiyah remains the most dangerous terrorist threat in this region because of its "association with al-Qaeda, the substantial training received in Afghanistan, their contact and connection to these radicalized groups in the Middle East."