Non-Subscriber Extract
UN launches ISU to reduce WMD threat
By Robin Hughes
24 August 2007
The UN has inaugurated a new unit to bolster its endeavours to reduce the threat to the international community posed by weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
The Implementation Support Unit (ISU) - launched on 20 August in Geneva as part of the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs - will assist state parties to the Biological Weapons Convention in their efforts to bolster implementation of the provisions of the convention.
The convention, which entered force in 1975, is the first multilateral disarmament treaty that bans an entire category of weapons. Unlike nuclear and chemical weapons treaties, which are both supported by well-established international organisations - the UN International Atomic Energy Agency and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons respectively - no such support has existed for biological weapons until now.