HAMBURG - Environmentalist organisation Greenpeace said yesterday that a high-ranking microbiologist in the US government's biological warfare programme was likely behind the current wave of anthrax attacks that has cost the lives of five people.

The Hamburg chapter of the group said in an article published in Greenpeace magazine that the sender of the letters containing anthrax spores aimed to force an increase in the US government budget for biological weapons.

Greenpeace did not name the suspect or the laboratory where he or she works.

The organisation cited as sources members of the US government delegation at a UN conference on biological warfare which opened November 19 in Geneva, as well as independent researchers at the meeting.

Greenpeace said it appeared that the plot to send letters with anthrax had been intended to terrorise political leaders and average citizens but not to kill them, noting that many of the envelopes had also contained warnings about the spores.

Greenpeace said it appeared that the anthrax attacks were planned well in advance of the September 11 terrorist hijackings in the United States and that the decision to start the plot after that terrorist assault was to divert suspicion to culprits in the Middle East.

* The US government has ordered 155 million smallpox vaccine doses to place in a stockpile large enough to vaccinate every American against the potential bioterror weapon, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson announced on Wednesday.

But officials said they were not planning a mass immunisation programme at present.

US health officials accelerated efforts to prepare for a smallpox attack after the Sept 11 attacks that killed about 3 900 people and as five people died in a mysterious rash of anthrax attacks starting in early October. - Nampa-AFP-Reuters