Smallpox was eradicated in 1979 - but two stocks of live smallpox virus remain.

For years the debate over what to do with them has raged - in Geneva developing countries argued it was high time to destroy all known samples of a virus which in the past claimed millions of lives.

But the United States and Russia, the two countries which hold the virus samples - wanted to keep them for at least another five years - saying that if smallpox ever re-emerged - either by accident or even deliberately - the samples could be needed to create a vaccine.

That argument seemed finally, after days of division, to swaymember states, and they approved a compromise - postponing a decision on destroying the virus samples for another three years.

And so the fate of one of the world's deadliest viruses is still not decided - and the debate over whether the world is safer with it, or without it, will continue.