US hunt for Iraq's Ebola factory

A biological weapons laboratory in Iraq is said to be making a deadly strain of virus codenamed Blue Nile, which American intelligence officials believe is the Ebola virus.

Washington is trying to pinpoint the location of the laboratory, revealed by defectors and Iraqi exiles. They described underground test chambers, tight security and a staff of 85 people working to equip Iraqi's military with biological agents powerful enough to inflict heavy casualities on any American invading force.

The Pentagon is examining satellite images of the west bank of the Tigris river in Baghdad, the Washington Post reports today. "It sounds credible," a Pentagon intelligence analyst is quoted as saying. "But proving it is another matter."

Finding the laboratory is important to President Bush, whose justification for an attack on Iraq is that the country is making biological and nuclear weapons that could pose a threat to the United States.

None of the Iraq dissidents has given US intelligence conclusive information on the state of Saddam Hussein's weapons programme. Washington experts agree, however, that Iraq has the knowhow and equipment to create weapons of mass destruction. If the laboratory is up and running, it would provide evidence of a biological weapons programme that was kept secret from the West for more than 15 years, hidden from UN inspectors. The UN destroyed all Iraq's known biological munitions, but admits it could not find all of them. Iraq admitted to the inspectors it had made three types of biological weapons using anthrax bacteria and two kinds of biological toxins.

President Bush has told senior members of Congress the US will not launch a military attack on Iraq before the November midterm elections, giving Congress time to debate such an operation. The Pentagon has said it needs six more months to put forces in place to fight in Iraq.