US Claims Proof of Cuba's Germ War Project

The state department head of intelligence said yesterday that the US had "substantial information" that Cuba was developing biological weapons and exporting dual-use technology, which could be used for germ warfare, to Iran.

Carl Ford, assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research, told a Senate committee that he would only provide the evidence to a closed-door session later in the day, but he insisted that it was convincing.

"We feel very confident about saying that they're working on an effort that would give them a limited BW offensive capability. And that's serious enough for us to tell you," he said.

"If we didn't think that it was important ... we would have looked at the evidence and said: 'This is all bogus and there's nothing here worth reporting,' " he added.

His testimony marks an important step in a row that blew up on May 6, when a conservative political appointee to the state department, John Bolton, made a widely reported speech to a rightwing thinktank accusing Cuba of developing biological weapons and exporting dangerous technology to Iran.

Cuba and Iran rejected the accusation. Former president Jimmy Carter, who visited Cuba a week later, questioned Mr Bolton's claim and said he had not been told of them in intelligence briefings before his visit.

Democrats have accused rightwingers in the administration of using the "war on terror" to pursue their own agenda in Colombia and Cuba, and argued that Mr Bolton's claim was intended to undermine Mr Carter's Cuban visit and lay the ground for President Bush's renewal of sanctions against Cuba last month.

The Connecticut Democrat senator Chris Dodd, who chaired yesterday's hearing, said he was concerned that the administration was "raising spectres" which could divert resources from defending the US from more substantial terrorist threats.

But Mr Ford largely supported Mr Bolton's claim. He repeatedly distinguished between a biological warfare "effort", involving research into different kinds of germ agents, and a fully fledged "programme", which would involve adapting germs for warheads, putting them into shells and missiles, and stockpiling those munitions.

"We never tried to suggest that we have the evidence, the smoking gun, proof positive, that [the Cubans] have a pro gramme," he said. But he added: "Although we make a distinction between a programme and an effort, its not to say an effort can't hurt you.

"The fact is with BW you don't have to put it in a 130mm howitzer shell or deliver it by rocket for it to be dangerous.

"Unfortunately it's the sort of thing that can be carried by individuals and brought here in an unconventional way."

He said that Iran had bought dual-use equipment from Cuba, which has a sophisticated biomedical industry specialising in vaccines and cancer therapies, in part because of European and US restrictions on exports.

But he agreed under questioning by Democratic senators that other countries, including Nato allies, had also sold equipment to Iran which could be used for BW purposes.

Jose de la Fuente, a Cuban scientist who once ran Cuba's biotechnology centre in Havana, and who defected to the United States in 1999, has insisted that that he had neither seen nor heard of any Cuban attempts to develop biological weapons.

But he did express concern about Havana's technology transfers to Tehran.

"No one believes that Iran is interested in these technologies for the purpose of protecting all the children in the Middle East from hepatitis," he wrote in the journal Nature Biotechnology last year.

The US was alarmed by a speech made by Fidel Castro last year on strengthening ties between Havana and Tehranin which .

he said: "Iran and Cuba ... can bring America to its knees. The US regime is very weak and we are witnessing this weakness from close up."