Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
heads were refrigerated, in 1988 US intelligence tentatively concluded
that the Soviet Union had mounted BW warheads on intercontinental
ballistic missiles. Between 1984 and 1988 the US reportedly issued six
démarches against the Soviet Union on BW. The first three featured con-
cerns about activities at Zagorsk; the rest concerned the 1979 Sverdlovsk
anthrax outbreak.
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The Sverdlovsk outbreak, together with the yellow rain allegations,
provided a major impetus toward the decision by the Second Review
Conference in 1986 to agree on annual data exchanges, including out-
breaks of infectious diseases and “similar occurrences caused by toxins
that appear to deviate from the normal pattern...ofoccurrence,” to
serve as a confidence-building measure (CBM).
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The Trilateral Process
Pasechnik's 1989 defection provided the main impetus for a series of se-
cret meetings among UK, US, and Soviet officials to clarify the status of
Soviet compliance with the BWC. The information he provided was key
to the identification and selection of Soviet sites the UK and US wished to
discuss with Soviet authorities and to visit.
This trilateral process consisted of preliminary informal discussions and
visits, discussions and visits within the framework of the Trilateral Agree-
ment, formalized in 1992, and follow-up discussions that began in mid-
1994 and effectively ended in 1996, when, according to a former UK of-
ficial and BW technical expert involved in the process, a letter from Rus-
sian Foreign Minister Evgeni Primakov to US Secretary of State Warren
Christopher went unanswered for lack of a “collective resolve” by the
parties to try to continue to overcome the unresolved issues.
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In other
words, the participants saw no further utility in continuing the process.
In January 1991 US and UK teams were allowed to visit the Institute
of Immunology (Chekhov), the Institute of Applied Microbiology (Obo-
lensk), the Institute of Molecular Biology (Kol'tsovo), and the Institute of
Highly Pure Preparations (Leningrad).
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Among the important discover-
ies made at the Obolensk facility were an explosive containment cham-
ber, extensive physical security and biosecurity measures, and a large-
scale fermentation capacity.
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The most significant event during the visit
at Kol'stovo was the admission by a worker that the facility was doing
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