Security chief calls for better biological attack planning

Date: 09/10/2003

By David Cronin

GREATER contingency planning is required for a possible biological attack on Europe, according to a high-ranking Council of Ministers official.

Robert Cooper, director-general for foreign and security policy, said most of the preparations for a biological assault at EU level related to European troops serving abroad. "I am not aware of any work done on the protection of populations against a biological attack," he told the European Parliament's foreign affairs committee on Tuesday (7 October).

Urging that more attention be paid to potential scenarios in which weapons of mass destruction are used in this continent, he added: "It would be no good after an attack to explain 'we were thinking of doing something'."

Cooper pinpointed efforts by some Muslim-dominated states to acquire nuclear weapons - in response to Israel's nuclear programme - as a major concern. Unlike Iran, where the country's atomic ambitions are currently under scrutiny, Israel has refused to accept the 1968 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

"At the moment, we have a slow arms race in the Middle East. The fear is that it could become a fast arms race if another country in the region happens to acquire [nuclear] weapons.

Unfortunately, we have a strategic dilemma that what one country sees as a security measure, another sees as a threat."

While Cooper described a scheme devised last year by the G8 leading industrialized nations to promote nuclear disarmament in the former Soviet Union "as one of the most cost-effective" measures that can be taken to deal with weapons of mass destruction, he pointed out the Union is only financing "a relatively small part" of that programme. The EU has committed about €1 billion over a decade, whereas the US has pledged nearly ten times that amount.

Robert Cooper, Director-General for Foreign and Security Policy at the Council of the European Union, told the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee on 7 October 2003 that more needed to be done to protect populations in Europe against a possible biological attack.