Global Security Newswire

Leaders from 21 countries agreed today to work to dismantle terrorist organizations, to prevent bioterrorist attacks and to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

“We agreed that transnational terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction pose direct and profound challenges to APEC’s vision of free, open and prosperous economies,” the leaders of the members of the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation forum said in a joint statement released at the end of a two-day summit held in Bangkok.

The APEC leaders also agreed to work to prevent WMD proliferation by “strengthening international nonproliferation regimes, adopting and enforcing effective export controls and taking other legitimate and appropriate measures against proliferation,” the joint statement said (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Oct. 21).

In addition, the APEC leaders agreed to work to strengthen their countries’ respective public health systems to better defend against acts of bioterrorism, according to the Associated Press. In their statement, the APEC leaders agreed to monitor disease outbreaks, to ensure the physical security of pathogens, to create domestic codes of conduct for biological scientists and to enact new export control laws concerning dual-use biological items (Associated Press, Oct. 21).