Barack Obama

U.S., Ukraine sign pact on germ threat

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Chicago Tribune correspondent
By Jeff Zeleny

KIEV, Ukraine -- The United States and Ukraine signed a joint agreement here Monday designed to curtail the threat of bioterrorism by placing modern safeguards on deadly pathogens and other material dating from a Soviet-era biological weapons program that now could be vulnerable to theft.

"The agreement has a benefit for the citizens of both countries," said Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who has been working several years to achieve the U.S.-Ukraine accord.

Moscow apologizes

As Lugar and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) met with Ukrainian leaders and participated in a signing ceremony for the biological weapons agreement, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a rare written apology to the senators for detaining them more than three hours Sunday as they tried to leave Russia for Ukraine.

There was no immediate explanation for the delay, but Moscow officials agreed to meet with their U.S. counterparts to discuss why American planes repeatedly have encountered difficulties leaving Russia.

The ministry said the U.S. plane technically had not been detained, but a spokesman added, "We regret the misunderstanding that arose and the inconvenience caused to the senators."

Lugar, who for more than 10 years has been working on dismantling nuclear weapons through the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, did not dwell on the plane incident after leaving Russia and arriving in Kiev. Instead he sought to draw attention to the freshly minted agreement that effectively expands the 1991 Nunn-Lugar Act to allow the U.S. to help protect Ukraine's biological weapons.

"Huge stockpiles of weapons left over from previous times in Ukraine are dangerous for the people of this country as well as for other countries," Lugar said, calling the agreement an achievement the U.S. has sought for nearly four years.

Five other former Soviet republics already have signed agreements to have the U.S. help upgrade their facilities that store biological weapons, but Ukraine previously had resisted signing the agreement. Even after a democratic revolution last fall swept in a new team of leaders, the reluctance continued in Ukraine, which government officials attributed to Kiev's desire not to appear too close to the U.S.

In a ceremony at the Central Sanitary and Epidemiological Station, the Ukraine equivalent of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the agreement was signed by lower-level deputies from the Health Ministry in a small, out-of-the-way room. The agreement was barely discussed during earlier meetings Monday with President Viktor Yushchenko and other Ukrainian leaders.

But the need for the agreement was clear, Obama said after touring the dilapidated building, where viruses were stored in areas either secured by thin padlocks or not locked at all. He said the health building, located near central Kiev, is vulnerable to break-ins and thefts of deadly pathogens, including anthrax, diphtheria and cholera.

"This agreement will help Ukraine improve its ability to diagnose, detect and respond to public health risks," Obama said. "When it comes to issues of security against terrorist threats and security against infectious diseases, these problems know no borders."

The agreement would provide new equipment that would significantly shorten the time required to diagnose the outbreak of a contagious disease and to assess whether it is the result of a terrorist attack.

Ukrainian official lauds pact

Many of the security upgrades and other improvements to the Ukraine national heath center are subject to congressional approval. Lugar said he did not know how much the program would cost or when it would be completed.

Dr. Lubov Nekrassova, a director of the Ukraine national heath center, said the security upgrades and new technology were desperately needed to keep lab materials from being stolen.

"The common sense finally will be put higher than the political difficulties that prevented us from signing this agreement," Nekrassova said.

Lugar and Obama are on a weeklong tour of Russia, Ukraine and Azerbaijan, inspecting destruction sites for nuclear weapons that fall under the Nunn-Lugar Act.