By Imogen Foulkes, BBC News, Geneva

媒體英語會帶大家一起學習 BBC 撰稿人在報道世界大事時常用到的單詞和短語。

Background: 世界衛生組織成員國在日內瓦開會并投票決定將銷毀致命性天花病毒標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.