Conference Finds Great Variance in How Biological Weapons Treaty Is Implemented

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

GENEVA — According to information collected this year, a significant number of parties to the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention have not passed or adequately enforced domestic laws to implement the treaty’s restrictions, senior diplomats said here yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 10).

The diplomats have convened this week for an annual meeting of treaty parties to discuss the problem and encourage states to either adopt or improve domestic legislation intended to implement the treaty. The pact bans the development, production and possession of biological agents for nonpeaceful purposes.

“The vast majority of the now 151 BWC states parties have clearly recognized the necessity for and identified the first steps for engaging in practical efforts to combat the growing biological weapons problem,” U.S. delegation leader Ambassador Donald Mahley told the meeting.

“However, much work remains for many states parties who lack or have yet to undertake effective efforts on a national level to implement the obligations they have assumed by becoming states part[ies], and thus to strengthen the BWC regime,” he said.

The U.S. assessment and others appeared to be based on descriptions of current implementation measures that were exchanged at a meeting of national experts in August (see GSN, Aug. 13).

Swiss representative Ambassador Christian Faessler said the level of existing treaty implementation measures varies among the pact’s participants.

“The meeting of experts clearly showed that the level of development of national legislations and the extent to which measures are applied vary significantly between states parties.”

The August meeting produced a lengthy report containing descriptions of the domestic measures adopted by many of the 85 states that attended. The report was compiled into a CD-ROM and was circulated among the treaty parties.

Some nations here have pushed for this week’s meeting to produce a requirement, or at least recommendations, for greater uniformity in how treaty parties implement the pact’s requirements.

“For the same reason that we have domestic laws, we also need international treaties and conventions, to codify rights and obligations of members of the community of sovereign states,” said Indian Ambassador Rakesh Sood.

“If unilateral actions could provide adequate assurances to the international community, good faith would constitute the norm,” he said.

Others argued against uniformity of treaty implementation measures, citing the complexity of many differing national approaches to implementation.

“In our view, rather than seeking agreement on a common approach or on a set of minimum standards, it would be better to make all national legislations and measures more efficient and to promote their implementation,” Switzerland’s Faessler said.

Many diplomats and experts agreed that this week’s meeting would be unable to formulate even a common understanding of what national implementation measures should look like.

There would be “little time to develop agreed language for such common understandings and effective action during the one-week meeting,” said Graham Pearson, a former British chemical and biological weapons official who is now with the University of Bradford.

U.S. Ambassador Mahley said an attempt to negotiate common elements could “dangerously delay [the] institution of strict measures” and could result in a “least-common-denominator model.”

Other nations, including members of the European Union, argued on the other hand that some common elements of national implementation measures were identified at the August meeting and they could be readily incorporated into a final document this week in the form of recommendations.

Making such recommendations should be the “primary task” of the meeting, said German Ambassador Volker Heinsberg.

Treaty parties are scheduled to meet annually to discuss this and related issues as they prepare for the treaty’s sixty review conference in 2006.

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