North Korea invites US Congress to visit alleged 'anthrax' plant

AFP News – 21 hours ago

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North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un (left) inspects the Pyongyang Bio-technical Institute, …

North Korea has challenged the entire US Congress to come and inspect a

bio-tech institute in Pyongyang that US experts have suggested is a facility

for mass-producing anthrax for the military.

A spokesman for the powerful National Defence Commission angrily stressed

that the facility in Pyongyang was solely dedicated to the manufacture of

pesticides, after a report published last week on the website of the US-Korea

Institute at Johns Hopkins University suggested otherwise.

"A thousand pairs of ears cannot match a pair of eyes," the spokesman said,

accusing the US government of spreading wild rumours about the North's

biological weapons programme.

"Come here right now, with all the 535 members of the House of

Representatives and the Senate as well as the imbecile secretaries and

deputy secretaries of the government who have made their voices hoarse

screaming for new sanctions," the spokesman said.

"Then they can behold the awe-inspiring sight of the Pyongyang Bio-technical

Institute," he added.

The spokesman's remarks, carried by the North's official KCNA news agency

on Monday, were not included in the English-language version of the same

report.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un inspected the institute last week, and

pictures of his visit published by state media were analysed by Mellisa

Hanham, a senior researcher at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in

Washington.

Hanham said the photographs showed Pyongyang had been importing dual-

use equipment.

"It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the institute is intended to produce

military-size batches of anthrax," she said. "The bottom line is that

regardless of whether the equipment is being used to produce anthrax today,

it could in the near future."

The Defence Commission dismissed the allegations as another example of the

United States' "hysteric rage" and its repeated efforts to "tarnish the sublime

image" of the country.

According to North Korean defectors and assessments by the US and South

Korean governments, Pyongyang began to acquire a biological weapons

capability as early as the 1960s under the orders of then leader Kim Il Sung.

In a 2012 white paper, the South Korean defence ministry estimated that the

North was able to indigenously produce a number of biological agents,

including anthrax and smallpox.--

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