71.   U.S. Ambassador Stephen J. Ledogar said the conference had roughly two weeks to meet the deadline, set in a U.N. resolution last year.

72.   A United Nations disarmament conference has decided to start work immediately on drafting a treaty banning nuclear testing, conference president Alessandro Vattani said here Friday.

73.   But Roth said the conference has to produce an economically sensible biosafety framework, adding it could take between two to five years.

74.   But the environmental group Greenpeace said the conference would have little effect on the depletion of fishing stocks.

75.   Dhanapala told them their work must be finished by noon Wednesday, or else the conference would have to vote on a decision.

76.   To meet what UN Secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali has described as a humanitarian challenge, the Vienna conference has several objectives.

77.   Ricupero said the conference had four major thrusts.

78.   The ARF conference has had an unprecedented attendance this year, with observers from Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia.

79.   The conference will have to decide whether to extend the mandates of peacekeeping forces in Tajikistan and the breakaway Georgian republic of Abkhazia.

80.   The disarmament conference also had to examine the delicate matter of the admission of new members such as Iraq and Israel to the conference.