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No absolute proof reuters Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020606/wl_nm/nato_weapons_dc_3http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020606/wl_nm/nato_weapons_dc_3
NATO Can't Wait for Proof to Fight Terror - U.S.
Thu Jun 6, 1:29 PM ET
By Tabassum Zakaria
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO (news - web sites) cannot wait until it has absolute proof of a threat to act against terrorists aggressively seeking biological, chemical and nuclear weapons, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Thursday.
He told NATO it must improve its protective measures and go on the offensive because a terror attack could occur at any time.
Threats from terrorists, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and missiles had been consistently underestimated.
"Absolute proof cannot be precondition for action," Rumsfeld told NATO defense ministers at a closed-door meeting in Brussels, according to an outline of his presentation.
The ministers discussed specific countries that Washington says are developing weapons of mass destruction and could pose a threat to allies. They included Iran, Iraq, North Korea (news - web sites), Cuba, Libya and Syria, a senior U.S. defense official said.
President Bush (news - web sites) branded Iran, Iraq and North Korea several months ago as an axis of evil seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction. The United States added the three other countries to the list last month.
"If a terrorist can attack at any time, at any place, using any technique, and it is physically impossible to defend every place at every time against every technique, then one needs to calibrate the definition of 'defensive'," Rumsfeld told a news conference.
OFFENSIVE OR DEFENSIVE?
"The only way to defend against individuals or groups or organizations or countries that have weapons of mass destruction and are bent on using them against you...is to take the effort to find those global networks and to deal with them as the United States did in Afghanistan (news - web sites)," he said.
"Now is that defensive or is it offensive? I personally think of it as defensive."
The United States launched strikes on Afghanistan to destroy Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) and his al Qaeda network, blamed for the September 11 attacks that killed about 3,000 people.
Rumsfeld made the case to NATO ministers that proliferation of weapons of mass destruction was "pervasive" and it was inevitable terrorists would have access to such capabilities, according to the outline.
"Attack will happen. Just question of when, where, and how," Rumsfeld's presentation said. "Could happen tomorrow, or years from now."
He said NATO should pool its knowledge on terrorist and WMD threats and perhaps develop a threat assessment and launch a campaign to raise awareness of the threat.
"This threat is not theoretical, it is real," Rumsfeld told reporters. If NATO did not move to counter it swiftly, "we could well experience attacks in our countries that could make the events of September 11 seem modest by comparison."
A senior U.S. defense official said participants at the meeting endorsed improving defenses against nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the ability to respond to them.
"The alliance in the past has frankly focused more on the chemical problem and less on radiological, nuclear and biological problems, so there is more of an emphasis now in this initiative on the biological side," the official said.
"There is a general agreement on the nature of the threat and the growth of the threat," NATO Secretary General George Robertson said.
"There is also a concern that we do not have enough in the way of capabilities to deal with some of these new and emerging threats," he told a media briefing.
"The American presentation today was not designed in any way to be divisive, nor was it divisive. It was simply a use of American intelligence to alert people to the fact that this threat grows much more real with every day that goes by."
According to a participant in the meeting, the U.S. presentation gave an example of what could be the horrific consequences of a smallpox attack.
"The briefings from the U.S. were stark, but not alarmist," the participant said on condition of anonymity.
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