U.S., ARMENIA TO SIGN BIOSECURITY PACT

Global Security Newswire
Feb 5 2009
DC

The United States and Armenia are preparing to sign an agreement aimed
at boosting the former Soviet state’s defenses against potential acts
of bioterrorism, Public Radio of Armenia reported today (see GSN,
July, 15, 2008).

The U.S. Defense Department and the Armenian Emergency Situations
Ministry would collaborate to strengthen Yerevan’s biosecurity
and biosafety measures, centralize and defend disease material and
associated research, and increase the nation’s capability to track,
identify, report and address biological threats.

The effort would be carried out through the U.S. Biological
Threat Reduction Program under the terms of a U.S.-Armenian WMD
counterproliferation pact signed in 2000 (see GSN, Nov. 23, 2005).

Biological Threat Reduction Program activities are already under way
in Russia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan
(Public Radio of Armenia, Feb. 5).