By Imogen Foulkes, BBC News, Geneva

媒體英語會帶大家一起學(xué)習(xí) BBC 撰稿人在報(bào)道世界大事時(shí)常用到的單詞和短語。

Background: 世界衛(wèi)生組織成員國在日內(nèi)瓦開會并投票決定將銷毀致命性天花病毒標(biāo)本的決定再延遲三年。

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 sway member 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.