Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The United Kingdom plans to propose next month to increase the ability of the U.N. Secretary General’s Office to investigate alleged uses of biological weapons, a U.S. biological weapons expert said yesterday (see GSN, April 13).

Two of the three main international nonproliferation treaties — the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the Chemical Weapons Convention — have associated agencies responsible for investigating suspected violations. The Biological Weapons Convention does not have a formal inspectorate, but the U.N. Secretary General has the authority to investigate suspected uses of biological weapons, though not other possible violations of the treaty.

The United Kingdom is set to make its proposal at a BWC expert conference scheduled for next month in Geneva, said Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, chairwoman of the Scientists’ Working Group on Chemical and Biological Weapons at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation. The British proposal is expected to include the creation of a roster of trained experts, a stockpile of necessary equipment and logistical capabilities such as aircraft ready to transport inspectors, she said during a conference held here by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Rosenberg said she was unsure whether the British proposal would call for creating a formal biological weapons inspections office within the U.N. Secretariat. Such an office, however, would be needed to provide adequate resources and would have to be created and funded through a U.N. General Assembly resolution, she said. 

Rosenberg also said that the British proposal would not seek to create an office equivalent to a formal BWC inspectorate. If a treaty inspection body were to be created at some point, though, the U.N. effort could be used to “jump-start” the process by transferring its experts, equipment and activities, she said.

Experts have said that there is reluctance to establish a formal treaty inspectorate due, in part, to concerns by pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies that inspections could lead to acts of industrial espionage. The Bush administration opposes the creation of treaty inspectorate, choosing instead to focus more on encouraging individual countries to work to prevent biological proliferation.