The Soviet Biological Weapons Program - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 153

government officials continue to make it (see Chapters 2, 4, and 13). 106
Finally, participants have noted that most scientists focused on the tech-
nical aspects of their work, giving little, if any, thought to possible moral
or legal considerations. 107
Biology-Related Developments
Since the early 1990s, a number of European countries and the US have
implemented cooperative R&D programs with facilities and personnel
previously involved in the Soviet BW program to help ensure that the lat-
ter remain employed in work for peaceful purposes. The bulk of such as-
sistance has been provided by the US within the framework of the 1991
Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program and, since 2002, the
Group of Eight (G8) Global Partnership against the Spread of Weapons and
Materials of Mass Destruction. Assistance is also provided through the In-
ternational Science and Technology Center (ISTC) program, established
in November 1992 by the European Union, Japan, Russia, and the US. 108
Some European assistance is provided within the framework of Technical
Assistance for the Commonwealth of Independent States (TACIS), an EU
program that will be ended by 2007. 109 Such programs have provided
greater transparency on former BW-related activities. Many of the out-
side cooperative efforts are directed toward cataloging and securing path-
ogenic strains at all biological facilities in the former Soviet Union.
Russian Developments and Programs
In the 1990s the Russian government undertook a number of mea-
sures to preserve or strengthen the country's biological sciences (for ex-
ample, domestic production of high-quality laboratory and diagnostic
equipment, vaccines, and medicines) and to improve defensive capabili-
ties against CBW attacks, including actions by nonstate actors (often de-
scribed in the context of the international “war on terrorism”). Some
of these efforts have featured cooperative projects between Russian min-
istries and scientific research establishments. Associations have also
been established involving the participation of both state and private (or
semiprivate) entities. For example, the Russian Federation Ministry of
Science and Technologies has proposed cooperation projects with Minis-