Al-Qaida said to possess nuclear arms

By The Associated Press

	J. Cofer Black
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The al-Qaida terror network bought tactical nuclear weapons from Ukraine in 1998 and is storing them for possible use, the pan-Arab newspaper al-Hayat reported yesterday.

There was no independent corroboration of the report, which appeared under an Islamabad, Pakistan, dateline and cited sources close to al-Qaida, which the United States blames for the Sept. 11, 2001, airliner attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

The paper said al-Qaida bought the weapons in suitcases in a deal arranged when Ukrainian scientists visited the Afghan city of Kandahar. The city was then a stronghold of the Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan at the time but were pushed from power in late 2001 by the United States and its Afghan military allies for refusing to turn al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden over to the U.S.

Al-Qaida would use the weapons only inside the U.S. or if the group faced a "crushing blow" threatening its existence, such as the use of nuclear or chemical weapons against its fighters, the paper quoted its sources as saying.

Ukraine inherited nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union, but in 1994 it agreed to send 1,900 nuclear warheads to Russia and sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

After the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, a former Russian national-security adviser, Alexander Lebed, said that up to 100 portable, suitcase-sized bombs were unaccounted for. Russia has denied such weapons existed.

Lebed said each one was equivalent to 1,000 tons of TNT and could kill as many as 100,000 people.

Al-Hayat did not say how many weapons al-Qaida bought or say who exactly had provided them.

There was no specific response yesterday from U.S. officials.

In Jakarta, Indonesia, yesterday, the State Department's top anti-terror official said terrorists have the will and some of the expertise to make a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapon, and are "doing everything they can" to acquire the materials.
 
J. Cofer Black, U.S. ambassador at large for anti-terrorism, said al-Qaida is still dangerous even though more than two-thirds of its leaders have been killed or arrested since 9-11.

Black said he and other U.S. officials are "killing ourselves" to make sure terrorists don't get a so-called "dirty bomb" or other unconventional weapons, but 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. "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."

Authorities fear terrorists could create a dirty bomb, which would use 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 hard to obtain. The material could be a lower-grade isotope, like those used in medicine or research.

"If al-Qaida were to put together a radiological device, they're going to use it," Black said. "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."

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company