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Friday May 26, 7:05 PM 34 Countries Take Part in WMD Drills In a drill, Turkish commandos rappelled from military helicopters onto a merchant ship that mock intelligence said was carrying weapons of mass destruction. U.S. commandos raced to join them from a nearby warship. The exercise Friday, with 34 countries participating, was a practice session to prepare for intercepting weapons materials before they reach a country like Iran, Turkey's neighbor. Officials say cooperation-building exercises like this are crucial to keeping Iran or other countries from receiving shipments of materials that they could use to help build a nuclear weapon. The drills began when a merchant ship left the Turkish port of Antalya without permission. Urgent intelligence reports then said the ship was carrying "smuggled materials." It was assumed they were weapons materials on their way to a hostile country. Warships from the United States, Turkey, France and Portugal raced into the open seas and surrounded the civilian ship about 25 miles into the Mediterranean. Turkish helicopters taking off from the TCG Gaziantep warship engaged and chased off a civilian helicopter that was apparently trying to unload cargo from the civilian merchant vessel. French and U.S. maritime patrol planes were also dispatched to monitor the area. Once the merchant ship was secured and boarded by Turkish commandos from the air and American commandos from the sea via a motorboat, chemical teams boarded and began to search the ship. They eventually found a container said to be carrying chemicals for weapons, which was decontaminated when the ship was returned to port. Officials from Turkey's atomic energy association, bomb destruction teams, police and customs agents also participated in the exercise, which included additional scenarios of searching vehicles carrying suspected weapons materials to an airport and a land customs gate. Observers were hosted above a Turkish naval frigate _ the TCG Barbaros _ for the exercise, which is said to be the largest so far of the Proliferation Security Initiative, or PSI, a program started in 2003 by President Bush. Though officials have repeatedly said the exercise is not aimed at any specific country, all eyes are on Iran, which is not likely to see the hosting of the nonproliferation exercise as a friendly move by its Muslim neighbor. Countries bordering Iran, including Persian Gulf countries and Turkey, have come under increasing pressure recently to cooperate with the U.S. and pressure the Islamic Republic to give up what the U.S. says is a secret nuclear weapons program. Analysts say the exercise will not only help increase preparedness for stopping illegal shipments that Iran could use in a weapons program, but the show of multinational forces cooperating in Turkey will send the message that most of the world is united against Iran possessing those weapons. "Iran already has most of what it needs for a nuclear weapon, but it continues to try to procure foreign components that would allow it to reach that capability faster and better," said Mark Fitzpatrick, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has credited PSI with several successes already in intercepting shipments of missile and nuclear technology headed to Iran, but she did not elaborate on details. PSI, however, is only one crucial part of a massive effort needed to prevent proliferation, said Charles Ferguson, fellow for science and technology at the U.S.-based Council on Foreign Relations. "My view is that PSI fills the gaps," Ferguson said. "The borders are porous in so many different areas, that's why we can't rely exclusively on PSI ... We also need to rely on more traditional tools such as export control, IAEA inspections and diplomacy." Ferguson said nonproliferation efforts concentrated too long on state-to-state transfers of technology and materials _ until Abdul Qadeer Khan, the founder of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, admitted in 2004 to passing nuclear technology to other countries, showing that the dangerous game also involved individuals or small groups and was getting more complex. Pakistan shares a long border with Iran. Officials from 34 countries observed or participated in Friday's exercise either from a naval ship or by computer, as militaries cooperated to track, board, search and disable suspect vessels. There have been more than a dozen previous PSI exercises held in other countries, though Turkey says this one was the largest yet. When South Korea agreed to participate in an earlier PSI exercise, North Korea, also believed to have a clandestine nuclear weapons program, called it a "war crime" and threatened all-out nuclear war. ___ Associated Press writer Benjamin Harvey contributed to this report from Istanbul.