The exciting recent developments in our understanding of the history of the Indo-Iranian languages and their speakers are surveyed and assessed by a group of internationally renowned linguists and archaeologists. In the last few years the materials available for the study of the older Indo-Iranian languages have increased dramatically: there have been sensational discoveries of texts in the ancient languages of north-west India and northern Afghanistan. Previously known data has been exploited in new ways using innovative techniques for compiling, manipulating and disseminating electronic text and digital images. And archaeological finds in India, Pakistan and Central Asia have given rise to new hypotheses concerning the history and pre-history of the Indo-Iranian peoples.

The evolution of the disarmament regime of the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) is described from 1980, when the first BTWC Review Conference was held, until 1998. The author analyses the results of SIPRI's first four review Conferences.