Five UN missions get white powder letters

Police are investigating letters containing white powder that were sent to five U.N. missions in New York City, but diplomats from the affected countries said on Tuesday that the material was harmless.

The U.N. missions of Austria, France, Germany and Uzbekistan received letters with an unidentified white powder on Monday.

Britain's U.N. mission in Manhattan also received a letter containing white powder on Tuesday and authorities were decontaminating the office where it was found, a British diplomat in New York told Reuters. The New York Police Department has said that it had already decontaminated 40 people as a precaution.

"The material is being examined by the authorities, and the preliminary finding we've received is that it was not dangerous," Austrian U.N. Ambassador Thomas Mayr-Harting said at U.N. headquarters. REUTERS