NEWS

‘Athens must bridge the WMD gap’

LOD, Israel (Reuters) – Greece needs to do more to prepare for any biological or chemical attack on the Athens Olympics and the mass casualties it could inflict, Israel’s security adviser to the Games said late Monday. Though he voiced no qualms about Israel attending the Olympics, opening on August 13 under record security, Major-General David Tsur urged Greece to hone the responses of emergency teams to save lives should Al Qaeda strike. «The one main gap the Greeks have yet to bridge is in preparing for the sort of coordination demanded by major terrorist attacks, especially when there are biological or chemical agents involved,» Tsur, one of seven international security experts advising Athens, told Reuters in an interview. Osama bin Laden’s global Islamist network has so far kept to similar suicide tactics, but security analysts believe it could soon turn to weapons of mass destruction. «The Greeks still have to work on coordinating their response teams, medical facilities and security forces. They are in the midst of preparations which I expect will go on until the last minute,» said Tsur, chief of Israel’s paramilitary police. Tsur said Israeli security forces had given «tens of millions of dollars’» worth of advice to Athens. «The Olympics are an ideal target because no other event enlists the entire civilized world and concentrates its representatives in one place,» Tsur said. «Al Qaeda thinks long-term, but as we have seen over the past few years, its terrorists can strike at short notice.»

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