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THE CBW CONVENTIONS BULLETIN News, Background and Comment on Chemical and Biological Weapons Issues

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THE CBW CONVENTIONS BULLETIN News, Background and Comment on Chemical and Biological Weapons Issues THE CBW CONVENTIONS BULLETIN News, Background and Comment on Chemical and Biological Weapons Issues ISSUE NO. 50 DECEMBER 2000 Quarterly Journal of the Harvard Sussex Program on CBW Armament and Arms Limitation THE CWC AND THE BWC YESTERDAY, TODAY, TOMORROW With this, the 50th issue of the Bulletin, we take the constructive verification culture — rather than an opportunity briefly to consider what has been done and adversarial one — that the CWC can truly serve its member some of what yet needs to be done toward building an states and the international community. effective multilateral treaty regime to prevent the acquisition It follows that the success of the CWC depends on its and use of chemical and biological weapons and to avert the states parties realizing that their own benefit and the benefit hostile exploitation of biotechnology. of all requires them to participate in the political organs of Writing in the Bulletin’s first issue (Summer 1988), the OPCW in a spirit of openness and cooperation. It is in Ambassador Charles Flowerree, former US representative this light that the two invited articles appearing later in this to the Conference on Disarmament and early member of the Bulletin warn against the excessive opacity and unnecessary Bulletin’s advisory committee, noted the emerging inter- limitations on verification activities that the OPCW has national agreement on the combination of declarations and imposed on the activities of its Technical Secretariat. inspections that was to form the core of the future CWC That there be no misunderstanding, it is not the chemical verification system. Flowerree also noted another element industry but rather a number of states parties and their that was to be central to the successful elaboration of the delegations within the political organs of the OPCW that Convention – the constructive role of the chemical industry have fostered these unhelpful developments. Indeed, in helping negotiators to design effective verification industry appears to be well pleased with the declaration measures that would not be unduly burdensome. formats and inspection procedures it helped to design, as Today the OPCW is a thriving concern, with 141 may be seen in the recent statement by the president of the member states and a Technical Secretariat that has American Chemical Council, the principal US chemical inspected declared chemical weapons production facilities trade organization, that industrial facilities inspected in the at 61 sites, all slated for verified destruction or conversion, US have made only favorable reports of their interactions and has completed the inventory of all 70,000 declared with OPCW inspectors. agent-tonnes of chemical weapons and 8.4 million chemical As member states gain experience and confidence in the munitions or containers, also to be destroyed, including verification regime and in the professionalism and those declared by two states not previously known to have objectivity of its inspectors, and as friends of the CWC press chemical weapons. Altogether, there have been more than for its full implementation and for maximum openness 900 inspections, nearly a third of them at declared industrial consistent with legitimate needs for confidentiality, the plant sites producing scheduled or discrete organic remaining apprehensions that now limit the development of chemicals as specified under the Convention’s Article VI. a positive CWC verification culture should subside and lose And beyond the OPCW itself, as required by Article VII, their influence within the OPCW. states parties have created or designated national authorities to liaise with the OPCW and to oversee and administer Editorial 1–2 national implementation of the CWC. Even more important than quantitative measures of Forthcoming Events 2 accomplishment, the Convention has brought into being an Invited Article by Tom Inch 3–5 expanding international chemical disarmament community – a community that has as its core a system of declarations Invited Article by Walter Krutzsch 5–8 and inspections that provides its members with an objective Progress in The Hague: 32nd Quarterly Review 8–17 and impartial means, where none had existed before, not Progress in Geneva: 13th Quarterly Review 17–25 only to assure themselves that other member states are abiding by their obligations, but also to demonstrate to the Proceedings in South Africa: 3rd Quarterly Review 25–26 international community that they themselves are in News Chronology August–October 2000 26–46 compliance. As recently underscored by OPCW Director- General José Bustani, it is in the build-up of a positive and Recent Publications 47–48 There remains a major practical problem that, if not Considering that biological weapons and the potential of solved, could eventually undermine the credibility of the future biotechnology for hostile misuse pose a danger to Convention. This is the difficulty faced by the Russian humanity if anything still greater than that of chemical Federation in accomplishing the timely destruction of the weapons, the need to develop a positive and cooperative immense stockpile of chemical weapons it inherited from verification culture worldwide is particularly great. the Soviet Union. Improved planning by the newly Perhaps, with the new leadership in two states that played reconstituted Russian national authority and increased leading roles in the creation of the CWC, increased political internal funding, reinforced by assistance from outside, are will to enhance mutual security through an effective BWC encouraging but the scale of the effort will need to be much protocol may yet appear. larger if even the extended CWC time-lines for chemical Two aspects of the protocol seem to us especially vital weapons destruction are to be met. for effective verification. First, the follow-up after Notwithstanding these qualifications, the CWC, at this submission of declarations should include mandatory visits relatively early stage in its evolution, must in most respects to declared sites. With merely voluntary visits, as advocated be counted a remarkable success. by some, declarations would lose much of their value. There Turning to the Biological Weapons Convention and the would be reduced incentive to prepare them properly. And negotiation of the Ad Hoc Group of its states parties to draft there would be less opportunity for states to assure a strengthening protocol, including verification measures, it themselves that other member states were abiding by their remains to be seen what provisions in the still heavily obligations, and less opportunity, also, to demonstrate to the bracketed rolling text of the protocol will be adopted and world that they themselves were in compliance. Second, the whether agreement can be reached before the Fifth BWC requirements for initiating a challenge investigation should Review Conference, which is scheduled for 19 November–7 be such as to ensure that, when genuinely merited, the December 2001. investigation would be approved. The CWC achieves this Regrettably, negotiation of the protocol has not had the by requiring a three-quarter majority of its 41-member depth of industry-government cooperation in the technical Executive Council to stop a challenge from going forward. analysis and design of verification measures that so While a similar requirement, in brackets, can be read in the benefitted the CWC. Instead, to the detriment of both rolling text of the BWC protocol, the opposite alternative, government and industry, dialogue has often been also present in brackets, would require a three-quarter superficial and at times even polarized. Similarly, some majority of the Executive Council in order to go ahead. If states parties to the BWC have grown more reluctant to we think back to the time when there was evidence for accept on-site verification of government facilities even suspecting specific facilities in the Soviet Union of though they accept such measures in the context of the CWC. harbouring BW activities, does it seem at all likely that one could have persuaded a large majority of an internationally diverse Executive Council to vote in a manner that some would consider tantamount to an accusation? Finally, we mention the problem of ensuring the Forthcoming events destruction, dismantlement or conversion of former biological weapons production facilities. The protocol rolling text has bracketed provisions only for declaration of 7–9 February, The Hague — 20–29 March, Budapest — facilities that have been destroyed, dismantled or converted an OPCW symposium on NATO ASI on Scientific and after a date yet to be determined and, in an appendix, a Cooperation and Legal Technological Aspects of the bracketed requirement to list former biological weapons Assistance for Effective Implementation of the Protocol facilities and indicate which have been destroyed. The Implementation of to the BTWC whole subject of former facilities is made difficult because International Agreements 22–27 April, Dubrovnik — the BWC says nothing whatever about them. Nevertheless, 9–11 February, Wiston First World Congress on such facilities do exist, particularly but not only the former House, Sussex — Wilton Park Chemical and Biological Soviet ones in Russia. Under the CWC, production facilities conference on International Terrorism, details on must be declared, inspected and certified as having been Co-operation to Prevent CBW www.asanltr.com/wbiot.htm either destroyed or acceptably converted to peaceful uses. Terrorism details on
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