By IPS Correspondents
VILNIUS, Lithuania, Nov 3 2001 (IPS)

The biological terror in the United States has reached the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius.

Lithuania’s microbiology laboratory reported this week that it found anthrax infection in mailbags from the U.S. embassy in Vilnius. The discovery in Vilnius is the first known case of postal anthrax in Eastern Europe.

“We found the anthrax pathogen in one of five mailbags the U.S. embassy in Vilnius gave us to check,” Director of the Lithuanian Microbiology Laboratory in Vilnius, Kazimiera Rutiene, told journalists.

Rutiene said all the five diplomatic mailbags have been exposed to high temperatures and are sterile now. The laboratory itself took security measures to protect its staff after uncovering the anthrax. Laboratory workers are currently taking antibiotics to prevent the infection.

Local epidemiologists have asked the U.S. embassy to isolate the area in order to prevent the infection from spreading. They also offered to help clean up the premises, which are possibly infected by spores of anthrax. The diplomats have not yet responded because the U.S. embassy was closed on Thursday for All Saints’ Day and Day of Dead, a national holiday that lasts several days in Lithuania.

The U.S. State Department’s mailroom was this week discovered to be infected with anthrax, and a diplomatic pouch received by the U.S. embassy in Peru was confirmed to contain anthrax spores, the first case of postal anthrax found outside the United States.

To prevent infection, the U.S. embassy in Vilnius said on Tuesday that, like other U.S. embassies around the world, it was temporarily halting postal correspondence with the U.S. State Department in Washington.

Members of the U.S. embassy staff in Vilnius are also taking antibiotics. The mail sorting room at the embassy has been sealed off pending disinfectant exercise. Lithuanian epidemiologists said the anthrax spores found in the mailbags do not pose a direct threat to public health in Lithuania.

Director of Lithuania’s State Security Department Mecys Laurinkus told journalists: “There’s no reason for panic in Lithuania.”

He said the State Security, which is Lithuania’s top intelligence service, is monitoring the situation and regularly exchanging information with the U.S. intelligence.

According to the media, Lithuania does not have any anthrax vaccine stocks on hand. Health officials said the stocks, which will be ordered from abroad, takes almost eight months from the time of vaccination for the human body to work up immunity to the disease.

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