Kazakhstan is denying any involvement in the anthrax cases in the US.
A US military team found anthrax spores in a pipe at a former biological weapons factory it is helping to decommission in the former Soviet state.
|
|
A US military team found anthrax spores in a pipe at a former biological weapons factory in Kazakhstan.
|
The former Soviet facility in Stepnogorsk was built in 1982 to replace another Soviet factory in Russia's Ural Mountains. That plant accidentally released anthrax into the air in 1979, killing about 70 people.
The huge facility in Central Asia was just one of six in the Soviet Union, which had the largest biological weapons complex in the world.
"In Kazakhstan, in co-operation with the United States, a dependable system of export control has been established, and its functioning is in full accordance with the standards meeting all necessary security needs, including questions of physical protection of sensitive facilities," the Kazak Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
"In this connection, the Kazak Foreign Ministry declares that reports in some US media about supposed ties between American citizens' infection with anthrax and the possibility of the anthrax breed from Kazakhstan falling into the hands of extremists have no basis".
The ministry says the plant will be destroyed within two years. Its technical equipment and infrastructure have already been destroyed.