Iraq:  France Leads U.N. Security Council Opposition to U.S. Resolution

The U.N. Security Council continues to debate a U.S. draft resolution on Iraq, with France, one of the five permanent members of the council, leading the opposition, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, Oct. 15).

“No breakthroughs have taken place to date, but the conversations continue,” said White House press secretary Ari Fleischer.  U.S. President George W. Bush has said “he was content to wait for days and weeks, not months.  It still is within that days and weeks time frame .... We’ll see if it goes beyond that,” Fleischer said (Associated Press/USA Today, Oct. 16).

So far, France has the support of about seven other U.N. Security Council members, including permanent members Russia and China, to block the U.S. resolution, according to the Los Angeles Times.  The United States only has the support of six U.N. Security Council members, and possibly a seventh, according to U.N. diplomatic calculations.

In order for a resolution to pass, it must receive nine votes with no opposition from any of the five permanent members.  A 15-0 vote on the resolution, however, is seen as being crucial to prevent the divisive effect of a 1999 U.N. Security Council resolution on Iraq.  The debate over that resolution, which passed 11-0 with France, Russia, China and Malaysia abstaining, was later used by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to obtain a three-year reprieve from inspections, U.S. officials said.

The Bush administration is under increasing pressure to compromise on four main issues, including the threat of immediate military action if Iraq fails to comply with inspections, according to U.S. and U.N. officials.  France has proposed a two-stage approach — one resolution outlining a new inspections regime and a second, if inspections fail, on possible consequences.

“It’s not just simply a problem of a second resolution, it’s about coming back to the Security Council,” Ginette de Matha, spokeswoman for the French mission to the United Nations, said yesterday.  “The Security Council must weigh the credibility of any failure (to comply) and decide what to do about it.  It could decide to use force.  It could choose some other action, like issuing a warning, but the important thing is that it is the council of 15 that decides.”

The other three issues on which the United States has been called on to compromise include armed escorts for inspectors, the interview of Iraqi scientists outside the country and the right of U.N. Security Council permanent members to send representatives along with inspectors, according to the Times.

These proposals have always been seen as part of the “negotiating fat” of diplomacy, U.S. and U.N. officials said.

The United States, however, has not indicated it will compromise on calling for “serious consequences” if Iraq fails to comply with inspections, language France also opposes (see GSN, Oct. 10).

“For us, ‘serious consequences’ is the same as ‘material breach.’  ‘Serious consequences’ can be interpreted as possible authorization for the use of force without returning to the Security Council.  We are against this,” De Matha said.  “We believe our position — to have the Security Council meet (again) to decide the consequences of any violation — is the correct position, both in principle and in law” (Los Angeles Times, Oct. 16).

White House Officials Discuss U.N. Strategy

Senior Bush administration officials met yesterday in Washington with John Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, to discuss strategy on accelerating the passage of the U.S. draft resolution, according to U.S. officials.

The meeting, involving Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior officials, was meant to “take stock” of the U.S. policy on Iraq as the administration decides whether to accept compromises on the U.S. resolution or to offer it to the U.N. Security Council as is, officials said.

There is growing frustration that Security Council negotiations have not produced a compromise resolution that would include a credible threat to attack Iraq if it fails to comply with inspections, administration officials said.  Negroponte was called to brief the assembled officials at yesterday’s meeting on how stringent a resolution the U.N. Security Council would accept.

Diplomatic Efforts

Meanwhile, there has been almost nonstop diplomatic communications between the United States, the United Kingdom and France, with British Prime Minister Tony Blair attempting to negotiate a compromise between the U.S. and French positions, diplomatic sources said.

One of the major issues preventing a compromise is trust, a diplomat said.  France does not believe U.S. assurances that the United States will not quickly attack Iraq if an authorization for military force is included in the U.N. resolution.  The United States sees France as attempting to delay, or even stop, what should be the logical result of Iraqi noncompliance, the diplomat and others said (Lynch/DeYoung/Washington Post, Oct. 16).

Blix Calls on Iraq to Accept Inspections

U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix urged Iraq yesterday to agree to terms on inspections that were worked out earlier this month during meetings held in Vienna.  Even if Iraq agrees, however, inspectors will not return to Iraq until they receive new instructions from the U.N. Security Council, he said.

Inspectors are still waiting for Iraqi agreement on several logistical issues, including helicopter flights for inspectors, conditions for interviews with Iraqi scientists and permission for aerial surveillance flights, Blix said before a closed meeting of the U.N. Security Council.  While there is “a large area of common understanding” with Iraq on the logistical terms for inspections, it has not agreed to all the arrangements made during the Vienna meetings, he said.

The “simplest way to clear up remaining points” on the terms of inspections would be for Iraq to give its broad approval, Blix said.  Since inspectors are waiting for the U.N. Security Council to approve a resolution on a new inspections regime, they will not arrive in Iraq on Oct. 19 — the date set by Baghdad for advance inspections teams to arrive, he said (Julia Preston, New York Times, Oct. 15).

Blix told U.N. Security Council members that inspectors “did not see any legal obstacles to deployment” but thought it “prudent to await the adoption of a new text.”

Both Russia and China have called for inspectors to return to Iraq ahead of any new U.N. resolution (see GSN, Oct. 8).

“He [Blix] said he’s ready, legally and technically ... and we said that he should go,” said Sergey Lavrov, Russia ambassador to the United Nations (Edith Lederer, Associated Press/Nando Times, Oct. 15).

“We believe that the imperative is to readmit U.N. weapons inspectors to Iraq as soon as possible to have outside inspection and then submit a report to the U.N. Security Council,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue.  “After reviewing such an objective report, then the U.N. Security Council should take some actions” (Associated Press/USA Today).

John Bolton, U.S. assistant secretary of state for arms control and international security, said he doubted that U.N. inspectors would ever have the opportunity to conduct full inspections in Iraq.

“If the inspectors get back in, it’s essentially a certainty that Saddam Hussein will try and obstruct them,” Bolton said.  “I don’t know whether that will be the first day, or the second day or the day after.  His desire to keep his weapons of mass destruction is an inherent part of his strategy for staying in power” (Preston, New York Times).

Israel to Stay Out of War

Israel has agreed to stay out of any U.S.-led military campaign against Iraq, provided Iraq does not attack Israel with chemical or biological weapons, USA Today reported today (see GSN, Oct. 11).

“We will do our best not to be involved,” a senior Israeli official said.  “The dilemma is if there is an unconventional attack without casualties.”  An attack with weapons of mass destruction, or a conventional attack that causes large numbers of casualties, could prompt Israel to respond, the official said.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is expected to revise Israeli contingency planning for a possible Iraq war when he meets with Bush today in Washington, Israeli officials said.  U.S. officials have told Israel that in exchange for not retaliating, the United States will work to prevent Iraqi missile attacks by searching Iraq’s western desert for missile systems, USA Today reported (see GSN, Oct. 15; Barbara Slavin, USA Today, Oct. 16).

Bush is also expected to promise Israel that the United States will help defend it against Iraqi missiles and weapons of mass destruction, according to the Washington Times.  During the 1991 Gulf War, the United States deployed Patriot missile interceptor batteries in Israel after Iraqi Scud missile attacks caused damage, but few casualties, near Tel Aviv (Joseph Curl, Washington Times, Oct. 16).

Bush to Sign Congressional Resolution

Bush invited about 100 members of Congress to the White House today to witness the signing of the congressional resolution granting him the authority to use force against Iraq, according to the Associated Press (see GSN, Oct. 11).  Last week, the House of Representatives voted 296-133 and the Senate voted 77-23 to pass the resolution (Jennifer Loven, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, Oct. 16).

“De-Nazification”

The U.S. policy of “regime change” in Iraq is targeted toward more than just Hussein, Bolton said.  He indicated that the approach likely to be taken in a post-Hussein Iraq would be similar to the de-Nazification process conducted in Germany after World War II.

“It’s not just the one person, obviously, it’s the top people around him,” Bolton said.  “I think one element that would have to be part of any post-Saddam process would be, in effect, the analog to de-Nazification, to take out the people at the top of the Iraqi regime who are so fundamentally part of Saddam’s entourage that their remaining in power would have the problem persist” (Preston, New York Times).

For further information, see:

UNMOVIC

U.N. Resolution 687 (Sanctions Regime)

U.N. Resolution 1409 (“Smart Sanctions”)

U.S. State Department Fact Sheet on Iraqi Sanctions Revisions

IAEA Iraq Action Team

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U.S. Response I:  Defense Spending Bill Creates Chem-Bio Research Fund

By Bryan Bender
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Congress this week plans to approve the largest defense spending increase in a generation, earmarking billions of dollars toward combating weapons of mass destruction, including new research funding to establish a “Chem-Bio Defense Initiatives Fund.”

House and Senate negotiators have reached final agreement on a $355.1 billion fiscal 2003 defense appropriations bill.  The legislation was approved late last week by the full House of Representatives and is awaiting Senate passage this week before being sent to President George W. Bush for his signature.

The legislation provides $7.4 billion for missile defense programs, $43 million less than the White House had requested, and represents the Bush administration’s first formal attempt to develop new anti-missile technologies free of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (see GSN, Oct. 15).  The United States withdrew from the treaty in June (see GSN, June 13).

One setback for the administration in the spending bill, however, was lawmakers’ refusal to approve a $10 billion war contingency fund requested by the Pentagon to fund unforeseen expenses tallied up as part of the international war on terrorism.

Despite the difficulty in predicting the military’s operational expenses between now and October 2003, legislators were unwilling to provide what some critics charged would be a blank check.  Instead, the Pentagon will likely have to continue requesting emergency funds to cover unforeseen war expenses, officials said.

The legislation, however, marks widespread support across the government in substantially beefing up U.S. counterproliferation programs and developing a host of new technologies and defensive tools to address the threat of weapons of mass destruction.

House and Senate conferees, responsible for ironing out differences between the House and Senate versions of the defense appropriations bill (see GSN, Aug. 7), took the added step of establishing a new research fund, totaling $25 million, that gives the military a freer hand in researching novel technologies.

“The conferees agree to establish a “Chem-Bio Defense Initiatives Fund” within the Department of Defense’s Chemical and Biological Defense program, and provide an increase of $25 million for this purpose,” according to the conference report.  “The secretary of defense is directed to allocate these funds among the program proposals listed below in a manner which yields the greatest gain in our chem-biodefense posture.”

Program proposals to be considered for the new research funds include a variety of efforts to enhance the Pentagon’s ability to detect a chemical or biological attack and prevent harm to U.S. personnel.

In addition to these new funds, the defense spending bill allocates hundreds of millions of dollars in procurement and research and development funds to address the WMD threat from a variety of approaches.  For example, of the nearly $2 billion in applied research on what are called “defense-wide” programs, nearly half is earmarked for WMD-related efforts, including under the headings Biological Warfare Defense, the Chemical and Biological Defense program, WMD Defeat Technology and Strategic Defense Technologies.

One anti-WMD technology in particular, a Pentagon proposal to develop a nuclear-tipped bunker buster weapon to defeat hardened and deeply buried targets such as biological weapons facilities, was provided with the requested $15.5 million.  Lawmakers conditioned the money, however, on receiving a Bush administration report outlining how the funds would be used and whether there are conventional alternatives to a nuclear penetrator (see GSN, Oct. 10).

The legislation also earmarks nearly $1.5 billion for the U.S. Army to continue destroying the U.S. stockpile of chemical arms, as required under the Chemical Weapons Convention (see GSN, Oct. 15).

Meanwhile, the bill calls on the Pentagon to provide a status report on the military’s anthrax vaccination program, including the potential need for new production (see GSN, Oct. 4).  The report should “assess the immediate and short-term preparedness and potential future total biowarfare defense need for the FDA-licensed anthrax vaccine, the potential need for expanded production capacity to meet that need, and the need for a separate production capacity to mitigate risks of an event which could result in a halt to current vaccine production.”

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U.S. Response II:  United States Short on Battlefield Shelters

The U.S. Army does not have enough mobile shelters to provide soldiers with adequate protection from a chemical or biological attack, Bloomberg.com reported today (see GSN, Oct. 2).

Michael Parker, deputy to the commander of the U.S. Army Soldier Biological, Chemical Command said the Pentagon’s shelters “are too large, too heavy and represent a significant logistics burden.”

“More critically, we have very few,” he said.

The shelters are either stand-alone units or attach to larger structures.  Parker said the shelters were essential to allow soldiers to rest while wearing their protective suits and gas masks.

“We need collective protection in order to pull people out and put them into an environment where they can stand down, rest, get re-acclimated and return to the battlefield,” Parker said.

Ray Decker, director of defense capabilities for the General Accounting Office, described the comments as “the strongest Pentagon acknowledgment to date of what could be a serious warfighting shortage” (Tony Capaccio, Bloomberg.com, Oct. 16).

Testifying before Congress, Pentagon Inspector General Joseph Schmitz said the military has only 5 percent of the shelters needed to provide medical treatment if a battlefield has been hit with chemical or biological weapons (Knight Ridder/Baltimore Sun, Oct. 15).

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U.S. Response III:  Panel Will Check Sensitive Student Visa Applications

Wary of non-U.S. students studying subjects relevant to weapons of mass destruction, U.S. officials announced plans last week for a panel that will evaluate select student visa applications (see GSN, May 21).

John Marburger, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, described the new panel to the U.S. House Science Committee.  The Interagency Panel on Advanced Science and Security will examine factors such as background, education, country of origin and desired area of study when reviewing applications, he said.

The panel will make recommendations to the State Department, which will still make the final decision on issuing visas.  The panel will, however, replace State policies that pay extra attention to students from countries that sponsor terrorism or students who want to study sensitive subjects, such as missile technology, and biological, chemical or nuclear warfare (Mark Bixler, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Oct. 16).

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Smallpox:  U.S. Officials Push Mass Vaccination

U.S. health officials this week will present their argument for a mass, nationwide smallpox vaccination campaign to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (see GSN, Oct. 15).

The committee has earlier recommended immunizing only 20,000 health care workers (see GSN, June 21); the officials are expected to try to persuade them otherwise today in Atlanta (see GSN, Sept. 27).

“We’ve taken the ACIP’s recommendations and expanded upon it,” said Bill Hall, spokesman for the Health and Human Services Department.

The department is also distributing information to doctors on recognizing smallpox symptoms and administering the vaccine, as well a list of people who cannot be inoculated.  Jerry Hauer, assistant Health and Human Services secretary for public health preparedness, announced the department plans to hire a psychiatrist trained in communication and mass panic.

“The ‘worried well’ can bring the health care system to its knees,” he said (Daniel Yee, Associated Press/Yahoo.com, Oct. 16).

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Anthrax:  CDC Vaccine Research Program Needs Additional Studies, Report Says

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention anthrax vaccine research program is generally appropriate, but a number of research studies should be canceled and others added, a group of U.S. scientific advisers said in a report released yesterday (see GSN, Oct. 4).

The CDC has proposed a number of research studies to evaluate the efficacy, safety and the acceptability by the public of the current anthrax vaccine — Anthrax Vaccine Adsorbed (AVA).  It is primarily used by the military, which began an anthrax vaccination program in 1998 (see GSN, May 20).  The vaccine is administered through a series of six injections over an 18-month period and requires annual boosters.

The CDC studies include both human clinical trials and primate studies for a number of factors such as required vaccine dosage and potential side effects, according to the report by the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine.  While the report praised a number of these studies, it found that several could be canceled due to their low priority.  The CDC also needs to conduct more research into the passive protection offered by the vaccine in primates in order to determine the level of antibody needed to protect against anthrax, the report says.

As part of its research on the anthrax vaccine, the CDC should examine its effect on children, the elderly and persons with chronic illnesses, the report says.  This study should become a high priority once the CDC determines how the vaccine should be optimally administered to healthy adults, the report says.  The CDC should also increase its research into the use of the anthrax vaccine as a post-anthrax exposure treatment, the report says (see GSN, March 7).

“With some additions to its research portfolio, CDC could make further contributions to understanding the safety and efficacy of AVA as it is currently used or of new uses of AVA or a new anthrax vaccine,” the report says.

The CDC needs to establish clearly defined senior leadership for the vaccine research program in order to provide authority and accountability, with one senior biomedical scientist put in charge of the entire program, according to the report.  An external advisory group for the vaccine research program should also be created in order to help determine which studies should be continued and what new research projects should begin.

“In the absence of authoritative centralized senior leadership, individual projects within programs can sometimes gain a momentum of their own and become difficult to modify or stop, even if they are no longer appropriate,” the report says.

For further information, see:

CDC Frequently Asked Questions About Anthrax

Journal of the American Medical Association Background on Anthrax

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U.S. Response:  Army, NIH Plan USAMRIID Upgrade

The U.S Army and the National Institutes of Health presented a plan yesterday to build a new campus at the U.S. Army Medical Institute of Infectious Diseases. The Fort Detrick, Md. facility houses both civilian and military scientists to develop better biological weapons defenses (see GSN, April 11).

The first stage of the national Defense Biomedical Research Consortium plan involves the construction of a $105 million NIH building near USAMRIID, according to the Associated Press.  Funding for the building, expected to begin construction in 2004, is almost guaranteed, said John La Montagne, deputy director of the NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The building will house a Biosafety Level 4 laboratory, used to conduct work on the most dangerous pathogens, La Montagne said.  NIH also plans to build a similar laboratory at its infectious-disease research facility in Hamilton, Mont., AP reported (see GSN, July 18).

The Army also plans to upgrade USAMRIID facilities as part of the consortium project, said Maj. Gen. Lester Martinez-Lopez, commander of Fort Detrick.  The Army plans to replace the 32-year-old main USAMRIID building with a larger facility expected to cost “close to a billion dollars” that will be connected to the new NIH facility, Martinez-Lopez said.  The Army hopes to begin construction of the new USAMRIID facility in 2007, but could begin earlier depending on public and congressional support, he said.

The new USAMRIID building is expected to have improved security measures, such as constant video monitoring of facilities, Army officials said (see GSN, July 29).  The security upgrades will also include a personnel reliability program the Army is developing to check the backgrounds and certifications of scientists working with biological agents, said USAMRIID commander Col. Erik Henchal (see GSN, Aug. 8; David Dishneau, Associated Press, Oct. 16).

The USAMRIID expansion will help create a “ brain trust” of both civilian and military scientists to develop better defenses against biological weapons, La Montagne and Martinez-Lopez said yesterday.

“We’re in the middle of a war,” Martinez-Lopez said.  “We want to build the best biotechnology center in the country.”

Meanwhile, a university consortium including the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland at Baltimore plan to apply for NIAID funding to become a “Regional Center of Excellence for Biodefense,” according to the Baltimore Sun (see GSN, Aug. 16).  The consortium might also apply for funding to build a Biosafety Level 4 laboratory, according to sources.

Some scientists and arms control experts, however, have criticized the expansion and new construction of biological research facilities.  Such an expansion could lead to an increase in biological attacks by increasing access to knowledge and biological agents, they said, adding that some investigators believe last fall’s anthrax attacks were carried out by someone with access to the U.S. biological defense program.

“These laboratories might become a pathogen-modification training academy or biowarfare agent ‘superstore,’” wrote Eileen Choffnes of the National Academy of Sciences in a recent article in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (Scott Shane, Baltimore Sun, Oct. 16).

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U.S. Response:  Researchers Develop Ricin Vaccine

Researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center have developed a ricin vaccine found to be effective in mice, Gene Therapy Weekly reported this week (see GSN, Aug. 20).

Ricin is a chemical toxin made from castor beans, which produces flu-like symptoms and causes death in a few days.  It can be administered through food and water or via an aerosol spray.

“Ricin is not only dangerous, but it is also cheap and easy to make,” said Ellen Vitetta, director of the university’s Southwestern Cancer Immunobiology Center and senior author of the study on the ricin vaccine, set to be published in the medical journal Vaccine.

The vaccine, developed through recombinant technology, will be tested against airborne ricin once the experiments can be conducted in a Biosafety Level 3 laboratory, Vitetta said, adding that arrangements for such a facility were in the planning stage. 

“We have only tested it against injected ricin, but, based on past experience, there’s every reason to believe it will be protective against aerosolized ricin,” she said.

Once vaccinated mice have been tested against airborne ricin, the next step would be to begin production and storage of the vaccine, as well as human trials, Vitetta said. U.S. agencies or private companies would have to step in and conduct the clinical trials because of limited resources, she said (Gene Therapy Weekly, Oct. 17).

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CWC:  Treaty Organization Must Redirect Focus, Report Claims

By David McGlinchey
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Strained for resources, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which oversees the Chemical Weapons Convention, is not completing one of its most inherent and important tasks, according to a report from a British arms control group (see GSN, Oct. 15).

Verifying the destruction of existing chemical weapons is eclipsing the convention’s role in ensuring new chemical weapons are not created, according to the Verification Research, Training and Information Center (VERTIC).  While treaty parties have declared 4,881 chemical production sites since the CWC came into effect in 1997, there have been only 452 inspections.  Some of those sites — Schedule 1 and 2 facilities that produce extremely dangerous chemicals or dual-use chemicals —were inspected more than once, meaning that the number of different plants inspected is even lower.

“There is no implication in the CWC that at any stage industry verification should be a secondary activity to CW destruction verification,” the report says.  “Contrary to this vision, in the first five years of the convention, verification activity has concentrated largely on existing CW stocks, former CW production facilities and CW destruction plants, while industry inspections have been relatively neglected.”

The report cites several causes for the lack of industry inspections, including late industry declarations, declining political support for industry verifications and financial constraints.

Indeed, while it is getting the lion’s share of the OPCW’s attention, the destruction of chemical weapons is moving much slower than planned.  The organization uses scarce resources to verify destruction of stockpiles, and little is left over for industry, the report says.

As more chemical weapons are destroyed in coming years, the OPCW will need to shift more attention to verifying industry compliance, the report says.  It is important, however, to expand the industry verification now in order to establish continuity and begin risk assessment in earnest, the report says.

Solutions

The report recommends that the OPCW spend at least one-quarter of its budget on industry verification in each of the next three years, with an increased emphasis on industry coming after 2006.  In 2001, the OPCW spent 15 percent of its budget on industry inspections.

The report also cites remote monitoring and the use of instruments such as flowmeters to monitor the destruction process, which would free up much needed resources.  Although such equipment would be expensive, the money would be spent up front and savings would be seen in the long run, the report says.

The report also recommends the organization simplify inspections to reduce costs and make at least one inspection of a facility in every member country that declared any chemical facility.

For further information, see:

CWC Text

OPCW Main Page

CWC States Parties

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Iraq:  Chinese Company in Missile Fuel Talks With Iraq

Iraq has attempted to purchase a chemical used as a missile fuel component from a Chinese state-run company, the Washington Times reported.

U.S. intelligence officials uncovered the talks between Iraq and the Chinese company in August and relayed the information to the White House.  Although there has been no evidence of any transfer of materials, U.S. officials said that the talks indicated China has not stopped selling arms to rogue nations.

“Chinese arms proliferation activities to the Mideast have continued unabated,” a U.S. official said (Bill Gertz, Washington Times, Oct. 16).

The revelation comes as Chinese officials have recently suggested closer military ties with the United States.

Chinese Defense Minister Chi Haotian last week said that better military relations would stabilize the region.  Chi told the Xinhua News Agency that China wants “military relations with the United States in the spirit of mutual respect, mutual reciprocity and equal consultation.”

Chinese President Jiang Zemin is scheduled to visit the United States on Oct. 22 (Associated Press/ Kuala Lumpur Star, Oct. 16).

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