German health minister gets impromptu White House bioterrorism chat

Washington (dpa) - German Health Minister Jens Spahn got surprised with a half hour talk with US National Security Advisor John Bolton about biological weapons, terrorism and epidemics at the White House on Monday, he told dpa.Spahn - a sometime critic of Chancellor Angela Merkel - has high contacts in the Trump administration. Nonetheless, the meeting had not been planned on his scheduled visit to Washington to meet health officals."We were in agreement that we have to do more work in these areas so that we can react quicker in crisis situations," Spahn told dpa later. In June, a Tunisian was arrested in the western German city of Cologne. According to investigators, he was planning an attack with Ricin. The suspect had contact with Islamic State and used their expertise in trying to plan the thwarted attack.Spahn said that such threats showed that the need to prepare against biological attack was not theoretical."Bioterrorism is the poor man‘s atomic bomb," he said. "With only a little work, you can do something terrible. That‘s why we have to work closely with our American colleagues in this arena."He also noted that Germany could learn from the US in this area.