MOSCOW -- Iran is scouring the former Soviet Union to hire scientists who once worked in laboratories tied to Moscow's vast germ warfare program and has succeeded in recruiting some of them to take jobs in Teheran, according to Russian scientists and American officials.

Iranian officials who report directly to the leadership of the Islamic state have approached dozens of scientists who once made germ weapons, offering as much as $5,000 a month to people who earn far less than that a year in the increasingly chaotic Russian economy.Russian scientists say that most of these entreaties have been rebuffed. But they acknowledge that at least five of their colleagues have gone to work in Iran in recent years. Others have accepted contracts that allow them to continue living in Russia while conducting research for Tehran, the scientists said.

In interviews in Russia and neighboring Kazakhstan, more than a dozen former germ warriors reported contacts with Iran, and two said they had been asked specifically to help Tehran make biological weapons. American officials say that many more Russian scientists have revealed such contacts and believe Iran is developing a germ arsenal.

Iran has powerful reasons to want such weapons and even expressed interest in acquiring them a decade ago. Most Iranians believe that Iraq used biological, as well as chemical, weapons in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980's, and many countries in the region, including Israel, Syria and Iraq, are suspected of having germ arsenals.

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Gholamhossein Dehghani, counselor to Iran's mission to the United Nations, said that many foreign scientists worked in his country, but were doing only peaceful research. He also stressed that Iran had ratified a 1972 international treaty banning germ warfare. He said he "categorically rejected" the claim that Iran is hiring Russian biologists to work on germ warfare. "We do not believe that having such weapons increases our security."

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