PARTIES TO BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS CONVENTION TO NEGOTIATE FIRST VERSION OF DRAFT COMPLIANCE PROTOCOL
Press Release
DC/2589
PARTIES TO BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS CONVENTION TO NEGOTIATE FIRST VERSION OF DRAFT COMPLIANCE PROTOCOL
19970710 GENEVA, 10 July (UN Information Service) -- The Ad Hoc Group of States Parties to the Biological Weapons Convention will meet in Geneva for three weeks starting next Monday to begin negotiations on a draft protocol on compliance with the 1972 treaty.This is the first time the group has before it a "rolling text" for a future protocol. Five previous substantive meetings, held between 1995 and 1997, were unsuccessful in elaborating consensus draft proposals on possible measures to strengthen the Convention, although the group was able to identify basic elements to be included in a compliance protocol when it convened in Geneva last March.
The Ad Hoc Group, open to all 138 States parties, was set up during a Special Conference in 1994 in order to examine appropriate measures, including possible verification measures, and draft proposals to strengthen the Convention, to be included, as appropriate, in a legally-binding instrument. It is mandated to consider, among other things, definitions of terms and objective criteria; confidence-building and transparency measures; compliance measures, and article X of the Convention, on exchange of information for peaceful purposes and international cooperation.
The treaty, which has 18 signatories in addition to the parties, is formally known as the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction.
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