Parties to the Biological Weapons Convention have begun discussing the treaty article-by-article and working to organize articles and ideas for a final declaration at the Fifth Review Conference, Hungarian Ambassador and conference President Tibor Toth said last week.  He added that the Drafting Committee planned to take over drafting the final declaration in the middle of this week.

Many states have expressed regret at the failure to agree on a verification protocol to the convention, Toth said. Some states pushed for a legally binding document based on a multilateral framework.  The United States, which had earlier rejected the draft protocol, had proposed alternative measures to strengthen the convention (see GSN, Nov. 21).  States were considering the U.S. proposals, but many continued to disagree on appropriate methods and measures to enforce the convention, Toth said.

Toth emphasized the need for treaty parties to reconfirm their support for the convention and go beyond rhetoric to implementation.  U.S. struggles to respond to recent anthrax incidents (see GSN, today) showed the importance of states working together to combat threats posed by biological weapons, Toth said, adding that states could create international response teams that could be dispatched within 24 hours.  States should cooperate to provide the necessary medicines and vaccines (see GSN, Nov. 14) to respond to biological warfare, he said.

Several speakers at the conference suggested that treaty parties meet more frequently to respond to rapid developments, Toth said, but meetings between the review conferences every five years had often failed to increase implementation.

The conference, which opened in Geneva on Nov. 19, is scheduled to conclude Dec. 7 (U.N. release, Nov. 22).

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