WASHINGTON (AP) _ The Associated Press reports a tentative agreement that national security officials should control the expected transfer of research on foot-and-mouth disease from an offshore lab to the U.S. mainland.

The move would erode the traditional role of the Agriculture Department in deciding the safest location to research one of the world's most contagious animal viruses.

The lab is now on isolated Plum Island, New York.

Possible locations for a new site are: San Antonio; Athens, Georgia; Manhattan, Kansas; Butner, North Carolina; and Flora, Mississippi.

U.S. House and Senate conferees on a farm bill agreed to the Bush administration's request to have the Homeland Security Department control the transfer.

The new lab site could be selected later this year, and the lab would open by 2014.