NTI: WMD 411

Produced by the Monterey Institute's Center for Nonproliferation Studies

Updated June 2006

The next opportunity to strengthen the BWC's inspection and enforcement provisions came at the Fifth BWC Review Conference, held in Geneva from November 19 to December 7, 2001, at a time when anthrax-tainted letters were front-page news in the United States. The meeting was the fifth in a series of BWC review conferences, which are held at five-year intervals to assess the implementation of the Convention and to devise measures for strengthening it. In attendance were 91 of the then 144 states parties to the BWC. Many of the member-states had hoped that the Fifth Review Conference would approve a formal mechanism for checking compliance with the BWC, but that was not the case.

Given the collapse of the Ad Hoc Group negotiations, a key objective of the Fifth Review Conference was to develop alternative strategies for strengthening the BWC. At the outset of the conference, the head of the U.S. delegation, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, accused six states of violating the BWC: Iran, Iraq, Libya, and North Korea (all parties to the Convention); Syria (which has signed but not ratified); and Sudan (which did not sign until October 2003). Bolton insisted that the Conference's Final Declaration refer to the problem of noncompliance, but several countries, led by Iran, objected to the U.S.-proposed language.

As an alternative to the BWC Protocol, which Bolton stated bluntly was "dead, and is not going to be resurrected," the United States offered a package of nine measures that could be implemented through national legislation. The U.S.-proposed measures included:

criminalizing the acquisition and possession of biological weapons;
restricting access to dangerous microbial pathogens and toxins;
supporting the World Health Organization's global system for disease surveillance and control;
establishing an ethical code of conduct for scientists working with dangerous pathogens;
contributing to an international team that would provide assistance in fighting outbreaks of infectious disease; and
strengthening an existing UN mechanism for conducting field investigations of alleged biological weapons use so that BWC member states would be required to accept investigations on their territory.

A number of the U.S.-proposed measures appeared in the draft Final Declaration, although agreement was not reached on the creation of a strengthened UN field investigation mechanism. Other contentious issues included a proposal by the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) countries to establish a committee to monitor trade and cooperation among BWC member states, and a bid by the radical NAM states (Iran, China, India, and Pakistan) for a mechanism to overturn denials of requested technology transfers. Western countries strongly opposed both NAM proposals.

Another unresolved question during the Review Conference was how to move forward with a mechanism to monitor BWC compliance. The United States strongly opposed resuming the Ad Hoc Group negotiations, whereas the NAM countries insisted that discussion of measures to strengthen the BWC should continue in a multilateral forum. In an attempt to devise a compromise plan, the European Union proposed annual meetings of BWC member states and the creation of governmental "expert groups" that would assess the implementation of strengthening measures agreed by the Review Conference and consider new ones.

The EU proposal appeared to offer a workable compromise. Nevertheless, late in the afternoon on the last day of the conference, December 7, 2001, the United States said it would accept the EU formula only on the condition that the mandate of the Ad Hoc Group was "terminated." European diplomats responded angrily to the U.S. move. Because preservation of the Ad Hoc Group mandate (and hence the possibility of restarting the multilateral negotiations when the political climate improved) had long been a bottom line for many delegations, the last-minute U.S. proposal blocked the consensus needed to adopt the politically binding Final Declaration. In a desperate bid to prevent the BWC Review Conference from failing completely, chairman Tóth suspended the meeting for a year. The Review Conference reconvened in Geneva on November 11-21, 2002.