British defense ministry officials have said Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is rebuilding a former bioweapons plant under the cover of tackling the foot-and-mouth disease epidemic that has struck Europe.

The London Telegraph said Monday that defense ministry officials believe the plant, if completed, will once again allow Saddam the ability to mass-produce biological weapons, including the botulism toxin and others.

The plant, the paper said, is located near Baghdad, at Al Daura. It was initially closed by United Nations weapons inspectors in the wake of the 1991 allied Gulf War victory, but Iraq is now making preparations for "industrial-scale production."

The paper said a senior member of Saddam's regime, in a letter to the U.N. Security Council recently, noted that Baghdad "will contact specialist companies with a view to the renovation of the laboratories for the production of foot-and-mouth vaccine."

The March 28 letter also warned "against attempts by the United States and the United Kingdom to obstruct" the renovation of the labs.

British defense officials said the plant has previously been used to make bioweapons.

"We have no reason to trust Saddam and every reason to believe he will subvert the laboratories for military use," David Kelly, a senior defense ministry official and bioweapons expert, told the Telegraph.

In 1995, U.N. inspectors discovered that Al Daura had been used to make botulism toxin and that researchers there were conducting studies into the development of infectious hemorrhagic conjunctivitis.

Iraqi officials have insisted that the plant must be rebuilt because of the danger foot-and-mouth disease poses to the Middle East, if it spreads from Britain and Europe.

Acting Iraqi Foreign Minister Hamid Yusuf Hammadi, in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, blamed the U.S. and Britain for creating an epidemic of the disease in Iraq in 1998, which followed the dismantling of the Al Daura plant by U.N. inspectors, the Telegraph said.

"That caused the loss of 575,421 lambs and calves and the infection of more than 2.5 million animals," Hammadi, in his letter, told Annan.

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