Clinton calls for tighter biological weapons ban

WASHINGTON - President Clinton on Saturday renewed his suggestion that a new global inspection system be created to detect and deter cheating on international agreements that outlaw biological weapons.

The president's appeal came on the 75th anniversary of the Geneva agreement that first banned chemical and biological weapons from the battlefield.

''Today, one of the greatest threats to American and global security is the danger that adversary nations or terrorist groups will obtain or use chemical or biological weapons,'' the president said in a statement. ''The international agreements we have reached banning these weapons are a critical component of our effort to protect against this threat.''

More than 140 nations are parties to the ban, reached at Geneva, Switzerland, on June 17, 1925. The pact, called the Geneva Protocol, resulted from worldwide revulsion to the use of poison gas during World War I and prohibited the use in warfare of chemical or biological weapons.

Later international agreements tightened the restrictions.

The 1972 Biological Weapons Convention barred the development, production and possession of biological or toxin weapons. The 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention did the same for chemical weapons. The United States has ratified both agreements.

Clinton renewed his call, first made in his 1998 State of the Union Address, to strengthen the biological weapons agreement ''with a new international inspection system to detect and deter cheating.''

He said ''significant progress'' has been made at talks in Geneva toward achieving that goal and urged all participants ''to work toward the earliest possible conclusion.''

''On this 75th anniversary of the Geneva Protocol, I call on the countries of the world who have not yet done so to join'' the chemical and biological weapons agreements, Clinton said.

Quoting the language of the Geneva agreement, he said it is more urgent than ever that the ban be ''universally accepted, binding alike the conscience and practice of nations.''

The 1925 agreement prohibited ''the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases'' and all related liquids, materials and devices.