Officials calm German anthrax fear

BERLIN, Germany -- Officials at a Berlin laboratory said on Friday that tests on a letter and two packages that initially tested positive for anthrax had failed to confirm the bacterium in further testing.

"We have only negative results so far," Health Minister Ulla Schmidt told ARD television, The Associated Press reported.

"There is no evidence of anthrax. We are examining further, but we can call off the alert for the time being."

The suspect packages -- a letter sent to an employment office in the eastern state of Thuringia and two parcels found in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein -- tested positive for anthrax in preliminary tests and were sent to Berlin for further examination.

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At a news conference earlier, Thuringia Health Minister Frank Michael Pietzsch said the letter which had tested positive in early tests was sent to an employment office in the town of Rudolstadt.

He said the three people in the employment office mailroom who had touched the letter, and seven others in the same room, were all tested.

He said workers called in authorities as the package appeared to contain a package of powder.

Pietzsch, who said there was no risk to the general public, said the letter had a return address in the Pakistani capital Islamabad but had been posted in Germany.

"The letter appeared to be unusual to the workers and they contacted police," said Pietzsch. "It had been sealed with tape and there appeared to be a small package of powder in it. It was not opened. The workers' conduct was exemplary."

Samples were flown by helicopter to Berlin for further tests at the Robert Koch Institute, he added.

The office where the letter arrived was briefly closed and disinfected. The German postal service said was shutting down a mail distribution office in Rudolstadt and a sorting centre in the nearby city of Gera. Workers at the two facilities were sent home.

Meanwhile, in Schleswig-Holstein health minister Heide Moser had told a news conference in the state capital Kiel that two parcels came up positive in initial tests for anthrax. Samples were also sent to Berlin for further tests after testing positive for anthrax in the city of Jena.

The parcels were among 21 packages found at several locations in the town of Neumuenster, including outside the city hall and in a forest, she said.

On the same case, Joerg Ziercke, a spokesman for police in Kiel, told Reuters: "We have a definite person under suspicion but we must continue our investigation." The suspect was not in custody, he said. Further details were not available.

Ziercke said their investigation showed that a total of 30 packages with suspicious contents were left in various locations -- with nine still to be located. It was not clear how police had come to the conclusion there were 30 in total.

One package was open when police found it, Ziercke said.

Germany has been hit by a series of false alerts for anthrax across the country in recent weeks, but until Friday no preliminary tests had so far proved positive.

On Thursday, a laboratory in Lithuania found traces of anthrax in at least one mailbag from the U.S. Embassy in the Baltic republic, the first such discovery in Europe.