Terrorist WMD threat played down

[cal04]

From correspondents in Helsinki, Finland


TERRORIST groups and organisations have neither the capacity nor the ambition to produce weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix and other experts said at a conference in Helsinki today.

"I'm as concerned about global warming and its long term effects" as about the immediate threat of terrorists acquiring weapons of mass destruction, said Mr Blix, a former Swedish diplomat who was charged with searching for such weapons ahead of the US-led invasion of Iraq. "Support and co-ordination from states would be needed for terrorists to produce WMDs," he said at a conference called WMD terrorism: how scared should we be?

Mr Blix acknowledged, however, that "there is a small but not zero risk" of terrorists laying their hands on weapons of mass destruction, and called for more preventive measures."Material and technology are now widespread and an ability to create WMDs is also greater," he said. John Parachini, a political analyst with the California-based Rand Corporation, agreed the current threat of terrorists gaining access to such weapons had perhaps been exaggerated.

"WMDs are not easy to produce," he said, saying "the mix of terrorism and WMDs becomes really dangerous if a group or groups form a sort of connection with a state and get knowledge from states how to produce WMDs"."WMDs used by al-Qaeda is much further off than we think", agreed Thomas Sanderson of the Strategic and International Studies' Transnational Threats Project.He cautioned, however, that the attacks on the World Trade Centre in 1993 and 2001 showed "the intention of terrorist groups to cause major damage is there".

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,12862601%255E1702,00.html

[rodeodance]

1. Blix did nto make friends on this side of the pond and looks like he will

never do so. Not that I mind.

[oneighty]

2. But I thought

anybody could make an Atomic Bomb in their garage. Reader's Digest said so years ago.

180

[struggle4progress]

3. kick