US Stalls Bio-Weapons Convention

In a strangely timed announcement, amidst the accusations of biological weapons programs in Iraq, the Bush Administration told its allies that it would delay work on a Biological Weapons Convention until 2006, reports the Washington Post.The Convention is meant to create ways to enforce the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. The US abruptly pulled out of negotiations in Geneva almost a year ago, promising that it would return with a new initiative. That initiative, apparently, will arrive in 2006.

The Administration claims that the current BWC plans will be ineffective, and that the positions of the negotiators are so divergent that it is better to delay negotiations altogether.

Plastic notes that this comes six months after the US backed the removal of a “highly-regarded head of the chemical weapons disarmament body on very similar grounds.”