Second Possible Iraqi
Mobile Lab Found
May 12, 2003 05:21 PM EDT
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Secretary of State Colin Powell said in
Egypt Monday he expected U.S. teams to find weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq.
"We believe there are weapons of mass destruction and we presented last week some evidence of one such program," Powell said, referring to the first trailer. Weapons experts aren't sure if the latest trailer is connected with the first, but it appears to have many of the same components, one official said. The first trailer was painted in a military color scheme and mounted on a transporter usually used for tanks, the Pentagon's intelligence chief said last week. The trailer contained a device for fermentation, or growing microbes, and a system to capture exhaust gases from that process, said Stephen Cambone, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence. American forces made another possible advance in the hunt for weapons of mass destruction during the weekend with the surrender of Dr. Rihab Rashid Taha, a top official in Iraq's biological weapons program called "Dr. Germ" by U.N. inspectors. If she cooperates with her captors, Taha could provide details about Iraq's germ weapons program. U.N. inspectors have described her as unpleasant and uncooperative, but she told the British Broadcasting Corp. this year that Iraq had ended its biological weapons program. Meanwhile, U.S. experts are poring through millions of pages of documents found in Iraq, looking for information about the country's suspected biological, chemical and nuclear programs. Investigators have found warehouses full of such documents, the senior Pentagon official said. |