Retaliation By Mail?

Travelers from Rome in need of a U.S. visa are finding more than the usual bureaucratic hurdles at the United States embassy, whose consular visa office has been closed to visitors since Monday. The reason, TIME has learned, is an envelope received there that was found to contain an unidentified white powder, sparking a security alert.

An employee in the visa office opened the envelope, which was handwritten and postmarked from another country in Europe, on Monday evening, a U.S. official told TIME on Tuesday. Authorities were alerted and a special Rome firefighter unit immediately sealed off the room. The substance was sent to a laboratory in southern Italy for analysis.

The incident has left some would-be foreign travelers to the United States stranded for at least several days until results of the laboratory tests are known, the U.S. official said.

The embassy in Rome is one of several U.S. embassies in Europe that received similar packages last September. It was also among a number public offices in Italy similarly targeted in the wake of 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States. In none of the other Italian cases has the substance turned out to be anthrax, pictured above, or any other harmful chemical or biological agent.

The embassy on Rome's historic Via Veneto has been under stepped — up security since the beginning of the war in Iraq, with added police and steel barriers set up around the perimeter and authorities ordered to keep several nearby demonstrations away from the vicinity.

Public opinion in Italy is strongly opposed to the U.S.-led conflict in Iraq, though the country's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is counted as one of the strongest European allies in the war effort.

The embassy was closed in January 2001 for three days because of reports of a terrorist plot by Islamic fundamentalists.