The US Defence Secretary, Mr William Cohen, said yesterday the United States would begin vaccinating its 35,000 troops in the Gulf against anthrax this month. Mr Cohen said he had decided to begin the immunisations - a series of six shots over 18 months followed by annual booster shots - at the request of the commander of US forces in the Gulf, Marine Corps Gen Anthony Zinni. Meanwhile, President Clinton sent Iraq a blunt warning that it faces military action if it fails to give UN arms inspectors unrestricted access to suspected weapons sites.
Mr Clinton made the threat as he praised Monday's unanimously agreed Security Council resolution warning Iraq of the 'severest consequences' if it fails to live up to the UN-brokered agreement.
'The government of Iraq should be under no illusion. The meaning of 'severest consequences' is clear - it provides authority to act if Iraq does not turn the commitment it has now made into compliance,' he said.
Mr Clinton avoided any explicit reference to armed strikes, but other US officials left no doubts about what he meant. 'The words 'severest consequences' is diplomatic code for military action,' the State Department spokesman, Mr James Rubin, said.
The United States believes Iraq has developed anthrax into a weapon that could be mounted on artillery shells or sprayed from aircraft. The disease, normally found in cattle, is considered 99 per cent lethal to unprotected humans.
The Pentagon said in December that it planned to vaccinate all 2.4 million active and reserve troops against anthrax over seven years, but that the shots would begin only after testing to assure the potency and purity of the vaccine.
'After a careful review, I have concluded that vaccination against anthrax is a safe, prudent force protection measure,' Mr Cohen said yesterday. Both Mr Cohen and the chairman of the US military Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Henry Shelton, have also begun the series of shots, Mr Cohen said.
The British Defence Secretary, Mr George Robertson, also had an anthrax vaccination yesterday, promising that all British soldiers and civilians serving in the Gulf region would have the option of being vaccinated.
Meanwhile Gen Zinni told Congress yesterday that the planned US bombing campaign against Iraq would have dealt a severe blow to President Saddam Hussein but would not have ended the long-term threat he poses.
Gen Zinni told the Senate Armed Services Committee: 'I could certainly not guarantee that anything we would have done would have served to topple him.' An Iraqi agent used information from the Pentagon to provide Baghdad with detailed plans for a US military strike, the Washington Times newspaper said yesterday. The unidentified spy, whose last name is reportedly known to the FBI, passed on the information to a senior Iraqi intelligence official, the paper said.
A Pentagon spokesman, Mr Kenneth Bacon, said: 'If Iraq is paying good money for such information, it doesn't seem like a good investment to me. It's information that was published on the front page of every newspaper in the country starting in February. And it was also information that turned out to be wrong.'