GENEVA, Switzerland, Dec. 6 (UPI) -- Parties to a treaty on biological weapons need to ensure a lessons-learned approach governs useful disarmament polices, a U.N. official said from Switzerland.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Judit Koromi, acting as chairwoman for the 2013 meeting for parties to the Biological Weapons Convention, said Friday a "rich variety" of voices were heard during a summer conference on disarmament.
"States [party to the convention] must now take this wealth of information and ideas and consider how they might transform it into common understandings and effective action," she said in a statement.
She said a four-day conference, which begins Monday in Geneva, Switzerland, will include ways to strengthen treaty implementation and how state parties will work domestically "to prevent disease" from being used as a weapon of war on its agenda.
The treaty on biological weapons was opened for signature in 1972. There are 170 states party to the convention and 10 which have signed but not yet ratified the measure.
