In a statement by President George W. Bush, the United States yesterday released more information on its proposals to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention (see GSN, Oct. 25).  U.S. representatives have been consulting with European allies and Canada during the last two weeks (see GSN, Nov. 1) on the U.S. plans for an alternative to the verification protocol that Washington rejected in July.

“The United States is committed to strengthening the Biological Weapons Convention as part of a comprehensive strategy for combating the complex threat of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism,” Bush said.

Foremost, his plan called for BWC parties to enact “strict national criminal legislation against prohibited biological warfare activities with strong extradition requirements.”  In addition, Bush called for establishing “an effective United Nations procedure for investigating suspicious outbreaks” of disease and “procedures for addressing BWC compliance concerns.”

Other measures included improving international response to disease outbreaks, establishing oversight mechanisms for the security of pathogens and devising a code of conduct for biological scientists (U.S. State Department release, Nov. 1).

The U.S. proposal had been under development since this summer, according to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. It was necessitated by the administration’s view that the long-negotiated verification protocol “was not addressing the problems that biological weapons pose,” Rice said in a press briefing yesterday.  “For instance, we have not believed that the kind of inspection regime that was there under the Biological Weapons Convention made sense.”

Rice said the administration wanted to present its proposals to the treaty review conference that is to begin meeting Nov. 19.

“We now think that if [we] can move toward a system of strengthening the convention that focuses on criminal activity and underground activity, that can make more effective the kinds of things that we’re doing,” Rice said (U.S. State Department release, Nov. 1).

The Bush proposal is an “ad hoc” solution that “would not be part of a formal treaty with rights and obligations,” according to Jonathan Tucker of the Monterey Institute of International Studies.  The proposal was better than nothing, Tucker said, but the Bush plan for U.N. inspections would only work “when the country hosting the inspection is cooperative.”

Nevertheless, many countries would regard the U.S. plan “as a good faith effort by the administration to come up with an alternative,” said Robert Einhorn, a former U.S. State Department proliferation specialist now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (Dana Milbank, Washington Post, Nov. 2).

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