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Coalition Forces Have Iraqi Mobile Bioweapons Facility

Wednesday, May 7, 2003
By Kathleen T. Rhem
American Forces Press Service

"Toward the end of this month," another organization, the Iraq Survey Group, headed by DIA staff officer Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton, will augment the 75th Group. Stephen Cambone said this organization will add another 1,300 experts and 800 support staff to the task of finding Saddam's weapons.

WASHINGTON -- AFIS
Coalition forces have obtained an Iraqi mobile biological weapons production facility, defense officials confirmed today. However, no traces of biological weapons have been found on the trailer.

Coalition forces in Iraq took control of the trailer April 19 at a Kurdish checkpoint near the northern town of Tall Kayf, the Defense Department's undersecretary for intelligence, Stephen Cambone, said in the Pentagon today.

"U.S. and U.K. technical experts have concluded that the unit does not appear to perform any function beyond … production of biological weapons," he said.

Secretary of State Colin Powell had described such facilities during an early February presentation to the United Nations. "The interior layout of that trailer matches closely what was described by the secretary of state," Cambone said.

Powell had said an Iraqi defector provided information about 18 such mobile labs. Cambone today said the same defector now says the trailer found in Iraq seems consistent with the facilities he was familiar with.

The undersecretary said the trailer is painted in a military color scheme and was being carried on a heavy- equipment transporter, typically used to transport tanks.
(More: DefenseLINK.mil)
2003 © U.S. Department of Defense.

Dan