Universal Membership Sought for Chemical Weapons Treaty; Barriers Remain in North Korea, Middle East

By Chris Schneidmiller
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons hopes to have all U.N.-recognized countries pledge their opposition to chemical weaponry by 2007. Between the group and its goal, however, are some of the most impoverished, secretive and strife-ridden nations in the world.

There are 164 countries party to the Chemical Weapons Convention, each agreeing not to develop or use chemical agents such as mustard gas and sarin and to destroy any existing stocks. Another 30 nations have signed but not ratified the treaty, said OPCW spokesman Peter Kaiser.

Holdouts include North Korea, Israel, Egypt and Syria, all of which are believed to have had chemical weapons programs. Other nonmembers are grouped in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific Islands, developing regions whose leaders might simply not see a reason to endure the cost and work involved in joining the treaty, experts said.

“It sounds very ambitious to me,” said Jonathan Tucker, a senior researcher at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. “It’s always good to have goals, but I don’t think they’re necessarily going to make that goal unless there’s a significant change in the Middle East situation. And North Korea is a wildcard,” he added.

“No treaty has ever achieved universality,” Tucker said.

Nevertheless, Kaiser remains optimistic about the organization’s effort. Interest in membership has increased since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, he said. Meanwhile, U.N. Security Council Resolution 1540 is pressing all U.N. states to develop measures to block the spread of weapons of mass destruction and to support global nonproliferation treaties (see GSN, April 29).

The Chemical Weapons Convention was opened for signature in 1993 and entered into force in April 1997 with 87 members. It added 77 parties in the next seven years, most recently the Marshall Islands and St. Kitts and Nevis (see GSN, May 26). Each new member strengthens the worldwide presumption against the use of chemical weapons and reduces the chances for a terrorist organization to obtain such agents, Kaiser said.

“We’re on the way,” he said. “We’re the fastest-growing nonproliferation regime on the planet,” Kaiser added.

Thirteen countries that have not joined the Chemical Weapons Convention for security reasons while the rest remain outside the treaty for lack of resources, Kaiser said.

Eleven of the security-related nonmembers are in the Middle East and Africa, home to at least two wartime uses of chemical weapons in recent decades. “Strong evidence” indicates Egypt used munitions filled with phosgene and mustard agent during the Yemen civil war in the late 1960s, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, while Iran reportedly suffered up to 5,000 deaths from chemical weapons in the 1980s during its war with Iraq. Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was formally arraigned today in an Iraqi court for war crimes charges, including the reported use of chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds in 1988 (see related GSN story, today).

The persistence of chemical weapons stockpiles today in the region revolves around the decades-old standoff between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Israel signed but never ratified the treaty, and is believed to have developed and possibly deployed chemical weapons before apparently ending its program, according to the Nuclear Threat Initative.

Egypt and Syria are strongly believed to have chemical weapons, and the United States suspects Iran does as well despite being a treaty member. For the Arab states, chemical weapons are meant to be a deterrent against Israel’s reported nuclear program, though Tucker said that would prove inadequate to stop Israel if it committed to an atomic attack.

Some Middle Eastern nations have indicated they will disarm only if Israel destroys its nuclear weapons, experts said.

“Absent a negotiated settlement [to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict] or a really strong American push to bring Israel on board, I can’t see anything changing,” said Nathan Brown, director of the Middle Eastern Studies program at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.

A U.S. official said the government works to persuade countries in the region that chemical weapons do not strengthen security, but could not elaborate on the diplomatic efforts.

Officials at the Israeli, Syrian and Egyptian embassies in Washington did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

Kaiser acknowledged that seeing more nations join the treaty in the Middle East would go hand-in-hand with the peace process, but said movement is possible. Libya this year gave up its WMD programs, and Kaiser said the new government of Iraq is hoped to join the treaty “sooner rather than later.”

There are other tough nuts to crack. North Korea’s nuclear efforts have held international attention for years, but reports indicate the communist nation has a chemical arsenal of up to 5,000 tons that contains choking and blistering weapons and possibly nerve agents. A June 15 North Korean statement vowed the country had the right to stockpile nuclear, chemical and biological weapons to protect itself from the U.S. WMD threat.

Having already withdrawn from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and blocked inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, North Korea is unlikely to allow the intense scrutiny required as a Chemical Weapons Convention member, Tucker said. 

“That would be a major change in North Korean policy to the rest of the world,” he said.

The international priority will remain on North Korea’s nuclear program, said the U.S. official, meaning a greater focus on the country’s chemical weapons would start only after resolution of the nuclear concerns that have spanned nearly two decades.

The existence of external enemies is perhaps only the most obvious reason for some nations to remain outside the treaty. Some countries have no chemical industry and see no reason to join, while others might be too internally troubled to bother, experts said.

“If their neighbors or their region doesn’t have [chemical weapons], possibly it’s not an interest for them,” said Herbert Howe, a Georgetown University assistant professor of African studies. “Countries like Sierra Leone are so preoccupied with other matters that it’s not surprising they haven’t signed on,” he added.

Sierra Leone is one of 12 African nations that have not joined the convention; the country continues to recover from an 11-year civil war while its people remain mired in poverty. Elsewhere in Africa, the leadership of the Democratic Republic of Congo survived a coup attempt in June, while the civilian government of the Central African Republic was toppled in March 2003.

The African Union, which represents 53 nations, has called for the continent to be freed of chemical weapons. The organization’s contacts with its member states could help persuade them to join the convention, Kaiser said. “The biggest difficulty is establishing a dialogue,” he said.

The next largest concentration of nonmembers is the Caribbean with six, followed by the Middle East and Asia with four each, the Pacific Islands with three and Central America with one.

To join the treaty, a country must enact national implementation legislation, establish an authority to oversee public and private adherence to the treaty and organize procedures for transferring chemical materials, monitoring industries and restricting access to materials.

Members must also pay annual dues. The United States this year paid more than $15 million to support OPCW operation, the U.S. official said; some small developing nations pay less than $1,000 a year.

Officials with the African Union, Pacific Islands Forum and Organization of Eastern Caribbean States did not respond to requests for comment for this article. Officials at Washington embassies for several nonmember states also could not be reached.

“These countries just have a small number of people who do every arms control treaty,” Tucker said of the Caribbean and Pacific Islands nations. “They’re overstretched and they just see no financial interest in doing the treaty,” he added.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons isn’t sitting back waiting for countries to join the treaty.

Last year it approved an “action plan” for universality, which includes hosting regional and subregional workshops, bilateral meetings and issuing publications in the languages of nonmember countries.

Nations that wish to join the treaty would also receive support from the organization and its member states and partner agencies, Kaiser said.

That help includes expertise in setting up the national implementation legislation and training for the personnel who would monitor the nation’s treaty compliance, the OPCW spokesman said.

The organization would also, as needed, supply member states with alarms, detectors and other protection equipment, decontaminants and medical treatment. That equipment has not yet been needed beyond training, Kaiser said.

Many smaller developing nations would have little other ability to respond to a chemical attack, the U.S. official said. Such nations rely on the legal and psychological norm against the use of chemical weapons for protection.

That norm is strengthened by increased participation in the convention, making it easier to impose economic or political sanctions on nations found to be working with chemical weapons, experts said.

“The more universal an agreement is, the more likely an agreement is to be universally adhered to,” said John Isaacs, president of the Council for a Livable World.

Without declarations and verification, the organization cannot know how much chemical weaponry remains in existence and whether there is a significant risk of its use by a rogue nation or diversion for a terrorist incident such as the 1995 Aum Shinrikyo sarin attack on the Tokyo subway. While individual countries might not feel themselves in danger, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is a global issue that must be addressed by all nations, Kaiser said.

There is stature to be gained in joining the convention, Howe said, for “being a willing member of the international community’s desire to lessen conflict and suffering.”

Nuclear Threat Initiative fact sheets on Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, North Korea and Syria, as well as Global Security Newswire articles on the Aum Shinrikyo cult.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: The Nuclear Threat Initiative is the sole sponsor of Global Security Newswire, which is published independently by National Journal Group.]

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