8 The BWC Review Conferences and the Verification Protocol

The BWC provided for Review Conferences to occur every five years. These have taken place as follows:

First Review Conference: March 3-21, 1980

Second Review Conference: September 8-26, 1986

Third Review Conference: September 9-27, 1991

Special Conference: September 19-30, 1994

Fourth Review Conference: November 25 – December 6, 1996

The Fifth Review Conference is to take place in November 2001 (presumably immediately preceded by a second Special Conference.) The Sixth would take place in 2006 and the Seventh in 2011.

The Second Review Conference in 1986 saw the beginning of pressure to see some kind of Verification procedure elaborated for the BWC. This led to an agreement on four politically, but not legally, binding “confidence building measures” (CBMs). They were the first five listed below. (The first was divided into two parts for the purposes of filing responses.) The last three CBMs below were added at the Third Review Conference in 1991.

1991 Third Review Conference Confidence Building Measures

A-1 Declaration of all high containment facilities

A-2 Declaration of national biological defense research and development programs

B Declaration of unusual outbreaks of disease

C Encouragement of publication of results

D Encouragement of international contacts/conferences

E Declaration of legislation related to the BTWC

F Declaration of past activities in offensive/defense biological research and development programs

G Declaration of human vaccine production facilities

At the 1991 Third BWC Review Conference, the WEU nations sought a rigorous and intrusive on-site inspection regime for the BWC, more or less analogous to that being elaborated for the CWC at the time. US opposition led to the compromise “VEREX” (Verification Experts) exercise, which occupied 1992 and 1993 and elaborated a series of measures which could be utilized in a verification protocol.[1] That, in turn, led to the Special Conference which convened the Ad-Hoc Group with a mandate to develop a Verification Protocol to the BWC.

The Ad-Hoc Group has been meeting since 1995. It has been in a “negotiating mode” since 1997, and there is now substantial doubt whether a Protocol will be decided upon before the November 2001 Review Conference. The problem nations have been several. Iran has insisted throughout that all export control regimes, and particularly the Australia Group arrangements, be totally abolished. China, India, Pakistan, and Cuba support the Iranian arguments. It is a position in explicit contradiction to the January 31, 1992 United Nations Security Council statement quoted at the beginning of the section 5 on proliferation above.

Even more striking, Iran plays a prominent role in the deliberations of the Ad-Hoc Group. One of its diplomats serves as a Friend of Chair, with responsibility for a negotiating subgroup, at the same time that official US statements have charged that Iran maintains an offensive biological weapons program. Iran’s CBM submissions under the BWC have notably omitted two particular statements: A-2, the Declaration of national biological defense research and development programs and F, the Declaration of Past activities in offensive/defense biological research and development programs. The other nations participating in the Ad-Hoc Group negotiations that are members of the “Non-Aligned Group” seem uninterested in the circumstance that there is a severe problem in combining Iran’s positions for the past decade in demanding an end to all technology export controls with Iran’s presumptive possession of a national offensive BW program.

Russia has been another problem throughout the process, seeking the inclusion of quantitative thresholds of agents that could be retained and lists of such agents. Both provisions would modify and narrow Article I of the BWC. Russia continues to maintain these positions, which are opposed by virtually all other negotiating states and which therefore promise to produce endless deadlock. Currently the major stumbling block is the United States, and the US government may deliver the final deathblow to the entire effort. The new U.S administration appears to have no interest in supporting prior policy in favor of a Verification Protocol, there is unlikely to be one ready for presentation to the Review Conference, and the entire effort is very likely to collapse in the coming months. That will mean, at the least, a loss of four more years, and perhaps the loss of the Verification Protocol altogether.

In the Geneva Ad-Hoc Group negotiations, the US is opposed by all its Western European Allies, but the US keeps pushing for continued dilution of provisions, and the other Western nations compromise their positions in order to convince the US to come along.

For the past two years, the US negotiating position has been driven by restrictions desired by the US Department of Defense in order to protect the explosion of biodefense activities now taking place in the US. As the negotiating text of the Verification Protocol gets weaker, should a text ever be approved and be submitted to the Senate, it would face the anticipated argument that it offered no benefits at all, and Senate opposition would be expected on this ground, as well as protection of US pharmaceutical interests, and so on. In the case of the Chemical Weapons Convention, industry was entirely and actively in its favor, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were convinced to support its ratification. Neither of these two circumstances holds for the BWC Verification Protocol. And even in that case, US Senate opponents attached a multitude of unilateral US provisions to the CWC Treaty ratification.

As others have pointed out, the ability to obtain US Senate ratification of arms control treaties negotiated and signed by the United States is currently very difficult. At the beginning of the second Clinton administration, more than half a dozen treaties were awaiting Senate action. By the end of the administration, only one, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, had been acted upon, and rejected by the Senate (also verification issues).

For the past year, the head of the US delegation to the BWC throughout this period, Ambassador Mahley, has actively campaigned against nominal US government policies to achieve a BWC Verification Protocol, arguing that the entire effort was a misguided affair, and that the US government should go to the November 2001 5^th BWC Review Conference and ask for a new negotiating mandate for the Protocol based on entirely different negotiating principles. For several months prior to the change in administration, the US delegation at the Ad Hoc Group was the only one to oppose the submission of a draft Protocol by the AHG Chairman. With the change in administration, Ambassador Mahley chaired an interagency review of US policy on a BWC Verification Protocol. The outcome was predictable. By mid-March, it was known that senior officials in the new administration would not support a Verification Protocol. On April 23 and 25, the first press reports appeared stating that the Bush administration had decided to reject the draft Protocol.[2] The US delegation was silent during the April-May 2001 AHG meetings. It is likely that the administration will propose some additional confidence-building measures as a face-saving device, but it is virtually certain the US government will not support a Verification Protocol to the BWC as long as the current administration holds office. (It should be noted that nine other nations, led by Iran, released a statement saying that the AHG Chairman’s text which had been the subject of discussion for the session was unacceptable.)[3]

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