Ministers Play Down Threat of Smallpox Attack

The interviews appeared side by side Tuesday in Germany's biggest newspaper, a publication that more than 3.9 million people buy each day. In the interviews, two German government ministers let readers know that there is little danger now that American-hating terrorists could unleash the smallpox virus on the German population.

"We have released everything that the public needs to know," Interior Minister Otto Schily said in the interview. "There is no cause for panic." And his colleague Health Minister Ulla Schmidt agreed. "There is really no concrete threat," Schmidt said.

The ministers' interviews appeared after a weekend of press reports that gave readers the opposite impression. As is usual on Saturdays, Germany's two biggest news magazines released details about the top stories in the editions going on sale Monday. Focus said intelligence officials had concrete information that Iraq had trained suicide bombers who could target Germany. Der Spiegel reported that a German decision to supply Patriot air-defense missiles to its NATO ally Turkey could make Germany a terrorist target.

Newspaper report of virus threat

The next day, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung raised the chilling possibility that Iraqi terrorists could spread the smallpox virus and kill roughly 25 million Germans. The story appeared under the headline "Bio-Terror: Danger Covered Up" and quoted from a Health Ministry document from August.

"German intelligence officials have documented information that the smallpox virus is being stored outside of the official laboratories in Atlanta and Koltsovo, (Russia), for instance in Russia, Iraq and North Korea," the story said.

Even before the paper hit the stands on Sunday, Schily was working to calm the possible worries the story could cause. In a television interview on Saturday evening, Schily denied that the government was keeping any information about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction secret. In addition, he said the government had only known that Iraq had experimented with the camel smallpox virus since the mid-'90s. Such a virus is harmless to humans, a Health Ministry official said.

Ministry responds to story

The Health Ministry later provided an explanation about the document mentioned by the paper itself. It said the information was provided to the Finance Ministry in an effort to gain support for Schmidt's effort to expand the country's vaccine supply. The document was written by medical experts, not intelligence experts, the ministry said. "As a result, any judgment about the risks associated with the smallpox virus is drastic and imprecise," said a ministry spokesman, Klaus Vater.

The newspaper report provided the country's major opposition party, the Christian Democratic Union, fresh ammunition to attack the government of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. "The danger from Iraq is real, not fictional," said the party's chairwoman, Angela Merkel. Other members of the party demanded that Schröder's coalition of Social Democrats and Greens address the issue in the German parliament.

Schmidt provided the government response in the interview that appeared on Tuesday. "The Union has to stop unsettling the German people," Schmidt said.

In an effort to allay the population's fears, Schily said: "Intelligence officials think there is only an abstract danger that terrorists will bring the smallpox virus to Germany. Intelligence officials do not have any concrete evidence that this is the case."

Government buying vaccine

The reports come at a time when the government is boosting its supply of the smallpox vaccine. It now has about 38 million doses and plans to have 100 million by year's end. In explaining the need for the program, Schmidt told the newspaper, "I want to make sure that if the worst case happens there is enough smallpox vaccine available."

Smallpox is an extremely dangerous virus and cannot be fought with antibiotics. The disease is known to kill more than 30 percent of its victims. Since obligatory smallpox vaccinations were abolished in 1976, adults' resistance today to the virus is regarded as weak and younger people are thought to have no protection at all.

In 1980, smallpox vaccination become superfluous: the World Health Organization declared smallpox as officially eradicated. However, small samples were kept in highly- protected laboratories in both the United States and in Russia.