- MOSCOW (www.nando.net) -- Russia's Foreign Ministry on Tuesday again
denied claims that the country is continuing to develop offensive biological
weapons.
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- "Russia does not have facilities
for producing biological weapons," Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennady
Tarasov told a news conference on Tuesday. "There is no reason to
doubt that Russia strictly complies with all of its commitments under the
Chemical Weapons Convention."
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- Ken Alibek, a former Soviet biological
weapons expert who fled to the United States in 1992, said recently he
believes Moscow has kept part of its Cold War biological weapons program
active.
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- In 1992, Russian President Boris Yeltsin
acknowledged the existence of a Soviet biological weapons program, and
since then has issued several decrees declaring that biological weapons
activities are illegal.
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- Both Russia and the United States continue
conduct research on programs to defend themselves against biological attacks.
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- Russia insists it has strictly complied
with the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, which bans the development,
production and stockpiling of biological and toxin weapons.
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