Bacon dismisses nuclear terrorist threat

Saturday, August 21, 1999

WASHINGTON [MENL] -- The United States has reiterated that it does not believe Islamic militants will gain access to nuclear weapons.

The assessment differs with that of a congressional investigator who published a book that Saudi fugitive Osama Bin Laden has access to nuclear and chemical weapons.

Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said the United States does not fear that North Korea and Pakistan, despite their economic woes, will try to sell nuclear technology or weapons to terrorists..

"When you're talking about nuclear weapons, most countries that -- I believe all countries -- that have nuclear weapons have worked very hard to get them," Bacon told a news conference on Thursday. "They have spent a lot of time and money and scientific enterprise in either developing them or buying them. They regard control of those weapons as an extremely important sign of their sovereignty and also extremely important to their national defense. So I don't anticipate that these weapons would fall into the wrong hands."

Bacon said the United States is more concerned that terrorist groups will gain access to biological and chemical weapons.

"It's one that the government is paying much more attention to these days and will pay more attention to in the future," he said.

Earlier this month, congressional researcher Yosef Bodansky said Bin Laden has been recruiting scientists from the former Soviet Union to build nuclear bombs.