Tests have begun to determine how to clean up an infamous stockpile of Soviet biological weapons, including anthrax, on a former island in the Aral Sea, an Uzbek expert said Wednesday.The project is part of U.S.-funded efforts to clean up former Vozrozhdeniye Island, whose name means \"resurrection,\" which has become a peninsula in the shrinking Aral Sea. Washington has given a total dlrs 10 million for the project — dlrs 6 million to Uzbekistan, which controls two-thirds of the island, and the rest to Kazakhstan. Testing to determine how to clean up the site began at the end of last month, said Bek Tashmukhamedov, a biology professor at the Uzbekistan Academy of Science in Tashkent. Earlier tests have already shown that dangerous micro-organisms remain in the soil, including anthrax, and could rise to the topsoil where they would remain lethal for centuries, he said. Because the island has become a peninsula, there is a risk that small animals such as rodents could carry remnants of the biological weapons to land where they could be a danger to humans, Tashmukhamedov said. Fearing an imminent Western inspection in 1988, the Soviets buried their stockpile of weapons-grade anthrax in 11 unmarked pits at Vozrozhdeniye and tried unsuccessfully to kill the spores with bleach. U.S. officials have said the project will include killing any live anthrax in the burial pits and the soil, and then razing the entire bioweapons lab complex. (AP)