North Korea has accused the United States of
targeting it with anthrax and asked the United
Nations Security Council to investigate
Washington’s “biological warfare schemes” after
a live anthrax sample was sent to a US base in
South Korea.
“The United States not only possesses deadly
weapons of mass destruction … but also is
attempting to use them in actual warfare against
(North Korea),” Pyongyang’s UN Ambassador Ja
Song Nam wrote in a letter to the UN Security
Council and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon,
which was made public Friday.
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North Korea “strongly requests the Security
Council take up the issue of the shipment of
anthrax germs in order to thoroughly investigate
the biological warfare schemes of the United
States,” Ja said in the letter dated June 4.
He also attached a statement from North Korea’s
National Defence Commission, which urged the
world to consider the anthrax shipment “the
gravest challenge to peace and a hideous crime
aimed at genocide.”
The US mission to the United Nations was not
immediately available for comment on the
allegations.
Pyongyang’s accusation came after the Pentagon
recently admitted that live anthrax samples were
inadvertently sent to Australia, Canada, Britain,
South Korea and laboratories in 19 US states and
Washington DC.
US investigators are trying to ascertain whether
the shipments of live anthrax stemmed from
quality control problems at the US military base in
Utah which sent them, Pentagon officials have
said.