N. Korea accused of stockpiling germ weapons

SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea has the capacity to wage germ warfare and may have stockpiled up to 5,000 tons of chemical weapons, according to South Korea's defense chief.

Defense minister Kim Dong-shin also told parliament that the North had anthrax and smallpox in its germ warfare arsenal.

Hours later, at a convention of 144 nations in Geneva, Switzerland, the United States accused North Korea of violating an international ban on biological weapons.

U.S. Under-Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, John Bolton, told the United Nations conference that North Korea, Iraq and probably Iran had violated a the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC).

He accused Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Libya and Syria and Sudan of building germ-warfare arsenals and suggested one of them might be helping suspected terrorist mastermind, Osama bin Laden.

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Underscoring the stress the United States has placed on biological warfare after deadly anthrax attacks that followed the September 11 plane hijackings, Bolton called for steps to tighten enforcement of the treaty, which outlaws germ warfare.

Iraq's representative Samir A'rena said that Iraq has been under sanctions since 1990 and that it could not import the necessary equipment for biological warfare into Iraq.

A'rena told AP that the U.S. was making the claim as a pretext for an attack on Iraq.

Kim's remarks to parliament in South Korea on Monday did not differentiate between biological and chemical warfare stockpiles, the Associated Press news agency reported.

But Kim did say there was no clear evidence linking the communist country with terrorist networks.

"The Armed Forces of North Korea," which catalogues the North's military capabilities, said the communist state's germ warfare inventory includes agents for anthrax, botulism, cholera, haemorrhagic fever, plague, smallpox, typhoid and yellow fever.

The book, published this year by Joseph S. Bermudez Jr, cites Western intelligence sources as saying North Korea has had the capability to produce biological agents for use as weapons since at least the mid-1970s.

However, it said there were no reliable estimates of North Korean germ warfare stockpiles, adding that the country had the technology and equipment to produce germ warfare agents quickly if needed.

It said the North's chemical weapons inventory was estimated to be at 2,500-5,000 tonnes, mostly of mustard, phosgene, sarin and V-agents.

North Korea has yet to respond publicly to the allegations of its germ warfare capability, which date back to the 1960s.

State media usually issue sharp attacks in response to criticism of the communist state.