Moscow, Apr 7 (IANS): The US is consistently building up its military biological potential in various regions of the world, taking advantage of gaps in international law, the Russian military has said.

Washington is creating biological laboratories in different countries and connecting them to a unified system, said Igor Kirillov, chief of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defence Forces of the Russian Armed Forces, Xinhua news agency reported.

In territories bordering Russia and China alone, there have been about 60 facilities modernised since 2005 with funding from the US military, he said at a meeting.

Kirillov noted that the US has spent more than $5 billion on military biological programmes since 2005.

According to him, these biological facilities are carrying out work in three areas: monitoring the biological situation in proposed areas for the deployment of military contingents of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation; collecting and delivering strains of dangerous microorganisms to the US; and studying potential agents of biological weapons.

Agents specific to a given region, having natural foci and capable of being transmitted to humans are also being studied, he added.