14 Dec - President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have been warned Osama bin Laden has 20 suitcase nuclear weapons obtained for cash from former KGB agents, the London Sunday Express reports in tomorrow's editions.

Last October, WorldNetDaily broke the story of bin Laden’s suitcase nukes, detailed in a new book by an FBI consultant on international terrorism.

The book,''Al Qaeda: Brotherhood of Terror,'' by Paul L. Williams, says bin Laden purchased 20 suitcase nuclear weapons in 1998 from former KGB agents for $30 million. The deal is reportedly one of three in the last decade in which al-Qaida purchased small nuclear weapons or weapons-grade nuclear uranium.

Williams says bin Laden's search for nuclear weapons began in 1988 when he hired a team of five nuclear scientists from Turkmenistan. These were former employees at the atomic reactor in Iraq before it was destroyed by Israel, Williams says. The team's project was the development of a nuclear reactor that could be used ''to transform a very small amount of material that could be placed in a package smaller than a backpack.''

''By 1990 bin Laden had hired hundreds of atomic scientists from the former Soviet Union for $2,000 a month – an amount far greater that their wages in the former Soviet republics,'' Williams writes. ''They worked in a highly sophisticated and well-fortified laboratory in Kandahar, Afghanistan.''

This work continued throughout the 1990s, the author says.

In 1993, according to the book, Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl, a bin Laden agent who turned into a Central Intelligence Agency source, purchased for al-Qaida a cylinder of weapons-grade uranium from a former Sudanese government minister who represented businessmen from South Africa. The purchase price was $1.5 million and the uranium was tested in Cyprus and transported to Afghanistan.

Al-Fadl reported that, at the time of this transfer, al-Qaida was already working on a deal for suitcase nukes developed for the KGB.

Williams says the Russian Mafia made another mysterious deal with ''Afghani Arabs'' in search of nuclear weapons in 1996. The Russians who sold the material now live in New York.

Then again in 1998, Mamdouh Mahmud Salim was arrested in Munich and charged with acting as an al-Qaida agent to purchase highly enriched uranium from a German laboratory.

That same year, according to Williams, bin Laden succeeded in buying the 20 suitcase nukes from Chechen Mafia figures, including former KGB agents. The $30 million deal was partly cash and partly heroin with a street value of $700 million.

''After the devices were obtained, they were placed in the hands of Arab nuclear scientists who, federal sources say, 'were probably trained at American universities,''' says Williams.

Though the devices were designed only to be operated by Soviet SPETZNAZ personnel, or special forces, al-Qaida scientists came up with a way of hot-wiring the bombs to the bodies of would-be martyrs, according to the book.

Suitcase nukes are not really suitcases at all, but suitcase-size nuclear devices. The weapons can be fired from grenade or rocket launchers or detonated by timers. A bomb placed in the center of a metropolitan area would be capable of instantly killing hundreds of thousands and exposing millions of others to lethal radiation.

Yossef Bodansky, author of ''Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America,'' and the U.S. Congress' top terrorism expert, concurs that bin Laden has already succeeded in purchasing suitcase nukes. Former Russian security chief Alexander Lebed also testified to Congress that 40 nuclear suitcases disappeared from the Russian arsenal after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Williams quotes an anonymous federal official as saying: ''The question isn't whether bin Laden has nuclear weapons, it's when he will try to use them.''

In addition to the suitcase nukes, Williams reports that al-Qaida has also obtained chemical weapons from North Korea and Iraq. Williams says the FBI confirmed to him that Saddam Hussein provided bin Laden with a ''gift'' of anthrax spores.

Williams says al-Qaida also includes in its arsenal plague viruses, including ebola and salmonella, from the former Soviet Union and Iraq, samples of botulism biotoxin from the Czech Republic, and sarin from Iraq and North Korea.

In 1996, the late Alexander Lebed, Russia's former chief of national security, asserted that Russia may have ''lost'' up to 100 one-kiloton ''suitcase-sized'' bombs, which he called ''ideal weapons to conduct nuclear terrorism.''

The Russian government immediately denied the weapons ever existed, but Alexei Yablokov, a former senior adviser to Yeltsin, told a U.S. congressional hearing that the weapons had been developed by the KGB in a project kept secret from the Russian military. © 2002 WorldNetDaily.com

THERAN - 10 Dec -- A high-ranking Israeli officer threatened that the Zionist regime would launch nuclear attack on Islamic holy sites in the Middle East, an Israeli newspaper said Sunday.

In case Israel was attacked by states or groups, the Jewish state would respond by dropping nuclear bombs on Islamic cities such as Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia and Qom in Iran. The Haaretz newspaper quoted an unidentified high-ranking officer a s saying.

It is an irony of our time Iraq has been suffering for a decade because it is accused of having some capabilities of unconventional weapons, while Israel announces that it possesses nuclear weapons, but there is not any international action against it.

The officer, a guide in the Israeli military academy, was quoted as saying that Israel possesses hundreds of nuclear warheads along with their delivery systems, including long-range ballistic missiles, long-range bombers and nuclear submarines.

Indeed, while is Iraq under the pressure, Israel is the only entity in the Middle East to possess a huge arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, including a sizable nuclear arsenal.

It is unfortunate that the United States, Israel's main protector, has always prevented any serious move to discuss Israel's weapons of mass destruction. But at the same time it has accused a number of other countries of trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction. It has put them under pressure on the basis of the very baseless accusations it has leveled against them.

It is time the Islamic world in the first place and the international community too took serious action to contain Israel. The Zionist regime is an occupationist, expansionist entity. It must be contained, else the entire world will be in danger.

[The Independent - 15 December 2002]: The American weaponry likely to be deployed in any military strike against Iraq is so advanced and hi-tech that some was not even ready to be used in the operation in Afghanistan just 12 months ago.

With an armoury including satellite imagery that can distinguish a tank from a bus, even through thick cloud, to microwave bombs that can destroy electrical and computer systems without hurting civilians, military planners preparing for war are confident that any strike would be completed in little more than a week.

"The first Gulf War was fought like the Second World War, with air dominance – pounding their defences, softening up the forces and then going in," said Daniel Gouré, a military analyst with the Washington-based Lexington Institute think tank. "This will be speedier, more precise – an effects-based operation. It will be much more surgical, both in the use of explosive force and in the overall operation."

While the present emphasis is on securing the evidence America would need to go to war – the UN wants a list of Iraqi scientists linked to arms programmes by the end of the month and is stepping up the pace of inspection, swooping on 11 sites yesterday – analysts agree that America's military dominance will ensure any assault on Iraq is brief.

Among the weapons Mr Gouré and others highlight are satellite-guided smart bombs known as Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs). While a number of these were used in Afghanistan, many more are likely to be deployed in Iraq.

The smart bombs available have also been upgraded. The GBU-28 "bunker-busters" have been upgraded by the BLU-31. Designed to penetrate hardened underground facilities, these have also been equipped with a new device called the hard-target smart fuse, which allows the bomb to "count" how many floors it needs to penetrate before detonating. A new category of bomb is the thermobaric device – only one was used in Afghanistan, and missed its target – which can penetrate indoor or underground spaces and then set off a blast of heat and pressure strong enough to destroy biological agents such as anthrax or smallpox.

One weapon that is completely untested in battle is the microwave bomb, which British and US experts have been working on for several years. Exploding in mid-air, these bombs release pulses of magnetic energy that seek out electrical systems and computers and burn them out – even if they are buried underground. These can also be used to create a fizzing sensation on a person's skin – something US law enforcement agencies have been testing for crowd control.

Chris Hellman, a senior analyst with the Centre for Defence Studies, said: "If it's available and we get into a situation where we are looking at urban warfare, it will definitely be used. They may not be man-portable, but having them on the back of a truck would not be a problem."

Other new or updated weapons include an improved battle tank, the Abrams MI A2, the Apache Longbow helicopter and a high-altitude version of the unmanned Pred- ator drone, which can be used to carry satellite surveillance equipment or Hellfire missiles. Another is the Stryker, an armoured fighting vehicle offering great manoeuvrability. Planners believe it could be so important that – unlike the recent campaigns in Kosovo and Afghanistan – ground forces could play as important a role as bombers.

John Pike, director of globalsecurity.org, another research group, believes the supremacy of US technology will mean any military operation will last little longer than a week.

"I think when this war is written up it will emerge as the re-emergence of the importance of land power," he said.