‘Asean forum on chemical, bio cases ignored risky US research’

THE recent Asean Regional Forum Exercise on Response Capabilities to Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Incidents which Manila hosted from June 13 to 15 “is a very important type of work in the modern world,” but failed to note some background of how Asean’s key backer, the United States, has itself been involved in research work that heightens the risk of such incidents.

This, according to briefing papers shared by Russian officials in Manila. Per the briefer, the US has provided financial and organizational support since 2005 to “a network of more than 30 biological laboratories engaged in research work on the study of deadly diseases, especially dangerous pathogens and viruses” which was deployed in Ukraine.

“American specialists regularly conducted studies of potential biological weapons agents specific to this region, which are having natural foci and are capable of being transmitted to humans,” the briefing paper claimed.

It added that, during the special operation of the Russian armed forces of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, “documentary materials were obtained, testifying to the emergency cleaning of traces of the military biological program held by Americans. So, on February 24 of this year, the Ministry of Health of Ukraine set the task to completely destroy the bioagents in the laboratories. According to officials, Washington seriously feared that irrefutable evidence of practical work of enhancement of the pathogenic properties of microorganisms using synthetic biology methods would fall into the hands of Russian experts.”

The paper added how, “For a long time, the USA, through its contractors, carried out various biological studies on the territory of Ukraine, including the study of particularly dangerous pathogens of Congocrimean fever, avian influenza, anthrax, leptospirosis, African swine fever.” It expressed concern “that such experiments are conducted near densely populated areas of European countries considered allies of the United States.”

Documents released by Russian experts in March indicate that the United States is developing a new type of biological weapon in Ukrainian laboratories, the paper recalled, and asserted that, “The US militarybiological activity in Ukraine violates the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Biological and Toxin Weapons and is a direct threat to the security not only of Russia, but also for the whole world.”

Alluding once more to the recent Southeast Asian events, the paper concluded, “unfortunately, during the Asean Regional Forum Exercise no one remembered these facts.”