In November 2001 at the Biological Weapons Convention Review Conference in Geneva, John Bolton, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, stated, “The draft protocol that was under negotiation for the past seven years is dead in our view. Dead, and it is not going to be resurrected”. US objections to the protocol referred to the Iraqi bioweapons program, and to the risks to the American homeland demonstrated through the September 11th attacks and the subsequent anthrax incidents. Dr. Al Zelicoff will review the history of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, and will discuss the recent negotiations in Geneva and why they failed. He will also propose specific goals for US policy in this area.

Al Zelicoff is currently a Senior Scientist in the National Security and Policy Planning group at Sandia National Laboratories. He has been a Member of the US Delegation to the Biological Weapons Convention since 1992. In this capacity, Dr. Zelicoff's roles include technical advisor and originator of the BWC-Web for exchange of information among State Parties. Dr. Zelicoff is a technical advisor to the Office of the Secretary of Defense regarding Multilateral Negotiations and Policy. He is also a member of the White House Office of Science and Technology Panel on Bioterrorism. Dr. Zelicoff is fluent in Russian, and is actively working with Russian regional epidemiology units on cooperative disease monitoring. He has a BS in Physics from Princeton University, and an MD degree from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.