U.S. Concerned as Russia Balks on Germ Vow

The United States and Britain are worried that the Russian government may not have fulfilled its promise to shut down the former Soviet Union’s extensive program for making illicit germ weapons, according to senior U.S. officials.

For reasons that are not clear to U.S. officials, Russia has yet to meet repeated requests for evidence that the germ-weapons program has been terminated and for a detailed declaration by Russia of the program’s past scope.

The issue may turn in part on the still-delicate relationship between Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin and military leaders. Underlying U.S. concerns is the suspicion that the program is not yet fully under Yeltsin’s control and that elements of it have been hidden by military officials who want to keep parts of the program intact.

U.S. officials said the Russians’ most serious omission is their failure to give an adequate account of the Soviet Union’s longstanding use of an ostensibly civilian pharmaceutical and medical complex known as Biopreparat as a cover for illicit military work.

A confidential report prepared this spring at Yeltsin’s direction by a retired Russian general, Anatoly Kuntsevich, revealed that the military had illicitly developed aerial bombs and rocket warheads capable of carrying deadly germs.

Yeltsin responded to Kuntsevich’s report by issuing a decree last April ordering such work halted and its funding withdrawn.