Washington — The United States and Ukraine agreed Monday to work jointly to prevent the spread of biological weapons, signing a pact that clears the way for Ukraine's government to receive U.S. aid to improve security at facilities where dangerous microbes are kept.
The agreement, the result of more than a year of negotiations, was announced by Sens. Richard G. Lugar, R-Ind. and Barack Obama, D-Ill., during a visit to the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. The senators credited Ukraine's reformist leaders, ushered into power by last fall's Orange Revolution, with breaking bureaucratic resistance to the pact.
One lab to receive funding is the I.I. Mechnikov Antiplague Scientific and Research Institute, in the Black Sea port city of Odessa. The institute was part of a Cold War network of "anti-plague" stations that supplied highly lethal pathogens to Soviet bioweapons factories.
Under the pact, the United States will fund security upgrades at key Ukrainian biological institutes and support peaceful research by Ukrainian scientists to fight the spread of natural diseases, said Mark Helmke, a staff member for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which Lugar chairs.
The senators' visit was disrupted Sunday when authorities refused to allow the delegation's military plane to leave Perm. After demanding that they be allowed to search the plane, the officials relented and allowed the aircraft to proceed, a spokesman for Lugar said. Monday, Russia's Foreign Ministry formally apologized for the incident.
Comments
LJWorld.com doesn’t necessarily condone the comments here, nor does it review every post. Read our full policy. Also, read about banned accounts and harassing comments.