RTw  03/27 0636  RUSSIA DEVELOPING ``SUPER-PLAGUE'' -- SUNDAY TIMES

    LONDON, March 27 (Reuter) - The Russian military is secretly developing
biological weapons of mass destruction, including a "super-plague" for which the West has no antidote, the Sunday Times newspaper reported.
It said the work was being carried out in defiance of President Boris
Yeltsin, who has been misled into believing the research has been halted.

The Sunday Times said the plague that Russia is developing, in breach of
international agreements, is so powerful that just 200 kg (440 lb) sprayed from planes or using airburst bombs could kill 500,000 people.
The article, by the paper's Washington correspondent, James Adams, cites
evidence that three Russian defectors have given to British and U.S.
intelligence services. 

Yeltsin has repeatedly reassured U.S. President Bill Clinton and British
Prime Minister John Major that the research programme has been stopped.
But the paper said a defector from the Biopreparat project told British
intelligence last autumn of the steps that the Russian military had taken to
keep the programme going behind Yeltsin's back.

The secret work continued in parts of factories that U.S. and British
inspectors never visited. "At the same time, a secret new facility was being built at Lakhta near St Petersburg," the Sunday Times said.
"Far from the Biopreparat biological warfare programme being shut down, it
had undergone considerable modernisation. Work is continuing as before, in
defiance of Yeltsin's orders," it said.

Apart from the danger biological weapons pose, the Sunday Times said
continuation of the project would make a mockery of Russia's pretensions to
democracy. "It also raises serious questions about the future intentions of the Russian military, who have used political capital and scarce rsources to
continue a programme that remains a key part of their war plans," the paper
said.

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