US to increase aid to reduce biological weapons

The US government will increase its financial assistance to Uzbekistan in its campaign against the storage and proliferation of biological weapons. "Visiting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers during the meeting with the Uzbek defence minister informed us about the US decision to increase the financing of joint projects to another US $21 million," Uzbek deputy foreign minister Vladimir Norov told journalists on Thursday in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent. According to the agreement signed between the defence ministries of the two countries in October 2001, the initial US aid on the joint projects stood at $39 million. "Now total US aid under the threat reduction programme (has) reached $60 million," Norov said. Richard Myers, who arrived in Tashkent on Wednesday evening, met Uzbek President Islam Karimov, along with other senior members of his government to discuss Uzbek-American relations, regional security and military-technical cooperation. The money would be earmarked for an integrated monitoring system of infectious diseases in Central Asia's most populous state, providing a possible model for the region, monitoring the sanitary-epidemiological situation among the people and livestock, both in civilian and military sectors, according to the Uzbek official. The agreement envisages the establishment of a central research laboratory of serious infectious deseases and its database, creating 14 regional diagnostic monitoring centres in the country, equipping them with modern devices and detectors of dangerous biological agents. Tashkent, alarmed by the health and environmental impact of the unstable Soviet era stockpiles and large-scale testing sites of chemical and biological weapons, has been working closely with US defence officials to tackle the problem. The biggest Soviet-era biological weapons complex on Vozrozhdeniye Island is located in the middle of the Aral Sea, once the fourth largest lake in the world, on the Uzbek-Kazakh border. Once the size of the Netherlands and Belgium combined, over the past 40 years, the Aral Sea has shrunk to half its original size following large-scale irrigation projects to promote cotton cultivation in the Central Asian Soviet Republics, and inefficient water use by the now independent states. Observers say that Moscow apparently opted to conduct this work on the island given its remoteness and harsh climate, which helped minimise the possibility of a disease outbreak caused by the site's activities. The Uzbek-American clean-up project has gained urgency as a natural land bridge between the island and the shore establishes itself with the shrinkage of the Aral Sea, providing a potential conduit for animals or humans contaminated with biological agents. Although Uzbekistan has been a close ally in the US-led war against terror since 11 September 2001, Washington announced in mid-July it would withhold up to US $18 million in aid because the Central Asian nation had failed to make progress in improving its human rights record.