GENEVA (Reuters) - The United States forced a germ warfare conference to break up on Friday without new measures to toughen an international ban, angering its European allies.
In a bid to save face, the review conference of the 1972 Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention opted formally to suspend work for a year until November 2002 after Washington put forward what one European delegate called a ``conference breaker.''
In a last-minute demand, Washington sought an end to attempts to give teeth through verification mechanisms to the pact outlawing biological weapons.
The move, which caught even European Union states by surprise, came just an hour before the end of the three-week meeting aimed at finding ways to beef up the 30-year-old pact.
``They have fired a missile at the conference. We are deeply disappointed,'' one senior European diplomat said.
Under pressure from the anthrax attacks in the United States, countries agreed on a number of measures but remained deeply divided on key issues.
Amongst these was the future of the so-called Ad Hoc negotiating committee -- backed by all countries except the United States -- which had sought to make the treaty testable.
Unlike other arms treaties, the biological weapons pact has no mechanism for checking whether members are obeying the rules.
The United States had already rejected ahead of the conference a draft protocol proposed by the committee that would have instituted a system of spot checks.
Washington said it would have exposed its industrial and military facilities to spying without giving any guarantees that it could catch cheats.