Research may break ban

MOSCOW -- Russian experts voiced concern Wednesday about U.S. plans to develop a potentially more lethal version of the bacterium that causes deadly anthrax, but the government refrained from immediate reaction. \nThe Pentagon confirmed its intention Tuesday to conduct the research once legal reviews have been completed and the U.S. Congress has been informed. The plan was first reported by The New York Times, which said it was part of a broader research effort to improve U.S. defenses against biological agents. \nDespite assertions by U.S. officials that the research was strictly defensive, some experts have pointed out that such work could violate the 1972 global ban on developing or acquiring biological weapons. \n"It's not prohibited to develop vaccines against biological weapons, but developing a new strain of anthrax would be a violation of the ban," said Alexander Gorbovsky, an expert at the government's Munitions Agency, which is in charge of legal issues relating to the ban on biological weapons. \nThere had been no official government reaction to the U.S. research, he said in a telephone interview, as Moscow was still studying official U.S. statements on the issue. \nThe Russian Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment. \nWith the United States' rejection in July of a draft protocol intended to strengthen the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, "the report on U.S. research is causing concern," Gorbovsky said in a telephone interview. \nThe ban failed to make a clear distinction between defensive and offensive research and contained no mechanism of control, creating a wide gray zone. \n"The Clinton administration supported the protocol as did U.S. allies in Western Europe, and the reversal of Washington's stance on the issue has vexed a liberal part of the American establishment," said Alexander Pikayev, a military analyst at the Carnegie Endowment in Moscow. \n"George W. Bush will now find himself in an awkward position, fending off accusations of breaching the ban"