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BWC: U.S. Pressuring Several Countries to Comply With Treaty By Greg Seigle Global Security Newswire WASHINGTON — The United States is pressuring more than the six countries it publicly accused of violating the Biological Weapons Convention to comply with the 1972 agreement, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton said today (see GSN, Nov. 20, 2001). In addition to building international consensus to coerce North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Sudan to comply with the treaty, U.S. officials are actively trying to convince several other countries to halt biological weapons programs that they are suspected of operating, Bolton said. During a treaty conference in Geneva in November, Bolton identified the six countries in a terse, strongly worded speech that surprised many analysts and diplomats. “There were other states that I did not name that I could have named,” Bolton said, adding that the list of six had been thoroughly reviewed by all pertinent U.S. agencies, with final approval coming from U.S. President George W. Bush. “There are reasons why you name some states and reasons why you don’t” name others, Bolton continued. “Those that we felt we had a better chance of impact on by not naming them publicly, for a variety of reasons we didn’t name them. Those that we felt we had no particular channel of communication to and which we felt fully deserved to be named in public we included in the list.” U.S. officials have in the past cited up to 13 countries accused of sponsoring biological weapons programs, but Bolton refused to divulge which countries they are. Sources said the seven others probably include Israel, Egypt, China, Russia, South Africa, Pakistan and India. Israel has never signed the treaty, which has been signed and ratified by 144 countries, including the United States, and another 18 have signed but not ratified it. Taiwan, Indonesia, Cuba are also suspected of developing biological weapons, but “there isn’t any independent confirmation or corroboration,” said Mike Powers, a research associate with the Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute. All three have also approved the accord. U.S. officials have not publicly named the other countries because of ramifications such accusations would have on other sensitive issues, Bolton said. Many countries, particularly Russia and China, view the United States as hypocritical because Washington refuses to cooperate with a popular amendment to add an enforcement protocol the treaty (see GSN, Dec. 10, 2001). Bolton said U.S. officials do not want to provide outside inspections of its biological facilities and capabilities to “people who [don’t] bear us the best wishes.” Such inspections could jeopardize U.S. efforts to develop chemical and biological detection and protection equipment, he said. Countries that have signed the treaty have been unable to reach an enforcement agreement mainly because of U.S. opposition. Previous administrations had negotiated terms of enforcement, but the Bush administration wants to scrap any such agreements. “A country that is willing to lie about its compliance … is a country that would be perfectly willing to sign the [enforcement] protocol and then lie about it,” Bolton said. “We don’t accept that it would be better than nothing. I would say it is worse than nothing,” he added. “It was our conclusion that more negotiations would probably not have solved it but made it worse.” Bolton said that trusting other countries, particularly the 13 or so the United States is pressuring to comply with the treaty, is like “the police sitting down with the Mafia to discuss their shared interest in law enforcement.”
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