Washington, Apr 14 (PTI) The US is expanding its 20-year-old search programme for weapons of mass destruction to East Africa in a bid to thwart the threat of bioterrorism emancipating from the region, a media report said.
The Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) programme began two decades ago to help secure and destroy Cold War-era nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction in the republics of the erstwhile Soviet Union.
Now, the programme is being expanded to East African countries like Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania after the roots of some of the world's deadliest diseases like the Ebola and Rift Valley Fever viruses were traced to the region, the American Chemical Society magazine 'Chemical & Engineering News' said.
In fact, East Africa is a volatile region and terrorist organisations like the al-Qaeda may use these deadly microbes to make biological weapons, the report said.
"Those weapons are being destroyed.