GENEVA, Aug 18 (APP): A reliable biosafety and biosecurity regime is essential to prevent and counter bioterrorism and biological warfare, Ambassador Masood Khan said.

Speaking at the 2008 meeting of experts of Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC), Ambassador of Pakistan Masood Khan stated that a biosafety and biosecurity system should have the elements of preparedness and response in the event of deliberate or accidental releases, and an effective disease surveillance mechanism at the national, regional and international levels.

He stressed that all stakeholders including governments, industry, life scientists, civil society, and international organizations, in particular WHO, FAO, OIE, OPCW, INTERPOL and UNESCO must be involved for such a regime.

Ambassador Masood Khan stated that the proscription on the use of the life sciences for malign purposes should not stifle scientific inquiry and research for beneficial purposes.

While emphasising the importance of a code of conduct for an oversight of the scientific research, he said that it was not possible to have one universal code of conduct.

He suggested that each state party needed to intensify its efforts to involve life scientists, policy makers and relevant international organizations to develop flexible but effective codes of conduct containing elements of ethics, education and training programmes.

He added that codes of conduct should not only focus on existing tangible and intangible technologies but fast developing disciplines such as synthetic biology and genomic technology.

Ambassador Masood Khan stated that Pakistan had taken a series of measures to strengthen the BTWC regime at the national level.

He added that all biological research and development institutions, including public and private sector organisations, were required to abide by the national and international obligations for biosafety and biosecurity, particularly the WHO guidelines.

Ambassador Masood Khan informed that a three-tier monitoring mechanism comprising the National Biosafety Committee (NBC), the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) and the Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) - had been established to oversee laboratory work, field trials, commercial release, import, export, sale and purchase of GMOs and their products.

He said that Pakistan Biological Safety Association had been recently launched under the umbrella of the National Core Group in Life Sciences (NCGLS) of the Higher Education Commission.

The Biological Weapons Convention, which opened for signature in 1972 and entered into force in 1975, is the first multilateral disarmament treaty banning an entire category of weapons.

It currently has 162 states parties. The BTWC holds meetings of experts and states parties every year. This year’s meetings’ themes are biosafety and biosecurity and oversight, education, awareness raising and codes of conduct.