David Kelly, an expert on biological warfare with UNSCOM, the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq, will discuss Iraq's biological weapons program at the auditorium in the Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) on the Cornell University campus Monday, March 29, at 12:15 p.m.

Kelly will speak during a special microbiology seminar at BTI, sponsored by the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, College of Veterinary Medicine.

Kelly led six biological warfare inspections in the former Soviet Union from 1991 to 1994. As senior adviser to UNSCOM, established by the U.N. Security Council in April 1991 to oversee the elimination of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, he led the first biological warfare inspection in Iraq in August 1991. He led the last one before the U.S. punitive air strike against Iraq, "Desert Fox," in December 1998. He has visited Iraq 37 times and has participated in all of UNSCOM's key inspections and technical discussions regarding Iraq's biological weapons.

Kelly is a graduate of Leeds and Birmingham universities in England and obtained his doctoral degree at Oxford University.

He was principal scientific officer at Britain's Natural Environment Research Council's Institute of Virology between 1972 and 1984, and head of microbiology of the Chemical Defense Establishment, Porton Down, England, from 1984 to 1992. Since 1992 he has been deputy chief scientific officer and senior adviser, biological defense, of the Proliferation and Arms Control Secretariat at the British Ministry of Defense.