The Russian state television allegations come just two weeks before Ukraine's parliamentary elections, in which one of the top issues will be whether Kiev's top foreign policy priority should be Russia or the West. President Viktor Yushchenko aspires for Ukraine to join NATO. The party that is currently ahead in the polls, led by former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, favors closer ties with Moscow.

Ukrainian officials vehemently denied allegations of a secret prison when they were first printed in a Swiss newspaper in January.

"There are no secret detention facilities or secret bases run by foreign governments on Ukrainian soil," Ukrainian State Security agency spokeswoman Maryna Ostapenko said at the time.

Mamontov last made a splash in Russia with his report on British spies allegedly sending and receiving intelligence through transmitters hidden in a rock in a Moscow park and funding non-governmental organizations. The footage for that broadcast came from Russia's intelligence service.

Mamontov did not divulge his sources for the Ukraine prison report, saying only that he got most of his information "practically from a firsthand source." He also spoke with an employee of a company that performed a renovation at the base and with soldiers who described underground storehouses.

The allegations of secret CIA prisons in Europe were first reported by The Washington Post in November. The New York-based Human Rights Watch group identified Romania and Poland as possible hosts of secret U.S.-run detention facilities; both denied involvement. Clandestine detention centers and secret flights to countries where suspects could face torture would violate European human rights treaties.

However, major disagreements arise around the conditions of access to the bases. While Bulgaria wants guarantees that these facilities would not be used without its consent, the US demand full access. They also want to apply their own jurisdiction and laws when an American violates the law on Bulgarian territory. Bulgarians do not agree on that point and this has stalled the negotiations for a while, the MP added.

Should both sides reach an agreement, the US would pay for the use and maintenance of the facilities and invest in military infrastructure, but all bases will be under a Bulgarian flag. There is no guarantee that such an agreement would be reached at all, Naydenov warned, and added that no specific deadlines have been set for concluding the negotiations.

There is a bog difference between Bulgaria and Romania's negotiations with the US, Naydenov said. While Romania has met all the demands put forth by the Americans, Bulgaria is trying to protect its national interests.

The US has asked to be given access to a third military base in central Bulgaria, though negotiations have been so far focused on two sites alone - Bezmer airfield and Novo Selo shooting range. An airfield at Graf Ignatievo, near the second largest Bulgarian city of Plovdiv, is said to match all of the Pentagon's requirements.

"We tried very hard to see if we could support this, but in the end we just didn't think this initiative met the very high bar we set for an effective council," US undersecretary of state for political affairs Nicholas Burns told the daily.

"The UN needs a stronger body to fight human rights abuses in places like Darfur and Burma," he added.

By voting against the council, said the daily, the US would not block passage of the resolution, which is backed by a majority of assembly members. However, it could open it to debilitating amendments from countries opposed to tightening the UN human rights system.

Washington has said it would prefer more discussions and negotiations on a new human rights council, even if they should take months, in the hope a better agreement could be reached.

It was unclear whether the current Human Rights Commission session would kick off again formally from March 20 if the General Assembly failed to strike a deal on its replacement.

Opposition in South America, the primary target of the plan, spans the political spectrum. When first confronted by US biowarfare pressure in 1999-2000, the Colombian government decided against testing and use of biological agents to eradicate illicit crops. Other Andean countries also oppose the plan, as do many environmental and peace NGOs. So do indigenous peoples who grow coca for cultural purposes unrelated to the drug trade, a constituency that includes Evo Morales, the recently-elected President of Bolivia.

Speaking to the Colombian daily El Tiempo on Monday, former Colombian President Andrés Pastrana, now Bogotá's Ambassador in Washington, emphatically reiterated Colombia's opposition to the plan, telling the paper, "During my government we opposed it. And Colombia's position, now under President Álvaro Uribe, has not changed."

The main biological weapons agents under US consideration are strains of the fungus Fusarium oxysporum that attack coca and other illicit crops. With its serious human health and environmental risks, F. oxysporum has been dubbed "Agent Green" by civil society opponents, who liken it to the defoliant Agent Orange that was used by the US in Vietnam. In the US conception, huge amounts of specially-formulated Fusarium would be sprayed from large military aircraft to blanket large portions of Colombia and, potentially, other countries.

The HR 2829 provision does not specifically mention Colombia or Fusarium, although it does specify that the testing plan should be for a "major drug producing nation". This opens the possibility that the tests could be conducted elsewhere, such as Central Asia, where the US has supported development of biological weapons for use against opium poppy. Given past events, however, the bill's language is widely interpreted to refer to Colombia.

The Sunshine Project hopes that the US Senate will catch this egregious mistake and that the provision will be struck from any related bill that it considers. With US fear about a biological weapons attack and spending on biodefense both at unprecedented levels, it is difficult to envision a more unwise US policy than for it to field test biological weapons and to seek to perpetrate a biological attack on other countries.