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Bugs of war The US looks set to scupper talks on enforcing the bioweapons treaty Exclusive from New Scientist magazine Photo: Philippe Psaila / KATZ 
The Bush administration is on the brink of demolishing another international arms-control agreement. In Geneva this week, 50 nations are trying to finalise a mechanism for policing the 1972 treaty banning biological weapons. The US is widely thought to have decided to reject the protocol, which will collapse without its support. But surprisingly, some arms control experts who support a stronger bioweapons treaty say this could be a good thing. They argue that the current proposal is so weak that it could help rather than hinder would-be biowarriors. Others say the proposal must succeed, because governments are unlikely ever to negotiate a stronger one. Negotiations on the protocol began in 1995, after the exposure of bioweapons programmes in Iraq and Russia made it clear the Biological Weapons Convention needed teeth. The compromise proposal on the table in Geneva this week calls on countries to declare what biological defence facilities and high-containment laboratories they possess, as well the agents they work with. A limited number of random inspections of these facilities would then be made by a proposed Organisation for the Prohibition of Biological Weapons, to check the declarations. Stricter inspections could be made if a government suspects it has been attacked, or that another country has bioweapons - so long as other member states agree. Wither away The US has been unenthusiastic about random visits ever since talks began (New Scientist, 28 February 1998, p 16). Drugs companies say they could endanger commercial secrets. The US delegation in Geneva this week has said only that it is waiting for the Bush administration to decide its policy. But arms-control experts say the Bush team has already decided to reject the protocol. "There are indications that it would prefer that the concept either be radically reshaped, or simply allowed to wither away," writes James Leonard, former US ambassador to the UN Conference on Disarmament, in this month's Arms Control Today. "The new administration will almost certainly reject the current proposal," says Alan Zelicoff of Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, a US negotiator until 1999. "And the Senate is unlikely to approve it in any case." Weak proposal But they and others attribute this not to the current administration's distaste for arms control, but to the proposal's weakness. For example, states bent on cheating could simply not declare labs, or they could grow pathogens in breweries (which need not be declared) or antibiotics factories (which are exempt from visits). Countries get two weeks' warning of random inspections, can limit what the visitors see, censor their report and ban biological sampling. Even following accusations of breaches of the treaty, the accused still gets 108 hours' notice of an inspection - more than enough to move or conceal cultures and equipment. Countries can also deny access to facilities and prohibit sampling. In a report released in Geneva this week by the Stimson Center, an arms-control think tank in Washington DC, a panel of American scientists and arms inspectors conclude that more research into how to carry out inspections is needed. In a test organised by the Stimson Center last July, two prominent infectious-disease experts, both veterans of bioweapons inspections in Iraq and Russia, visited a high-containment laboratory in New York state. The centre had secretly planted fake anthrax cultures and records, and told the chief technician to "act nervous". The team missed the "anthrax"--but did find several spurious causes for concern. Critics say this shows the proposed protocol could create unwarranted suspicion instead of greater trust - alienating participants while failing to catch culprits. Agonising choice "An impotent monitoring protocol will implode sooner or later," the Stimson report concludes, which means the bioweapons treaty could be "violated at will and possibly with impunity". The question is what will happen if, as seems likely, the US rejects the current proposal. Developing countries and Russia will not sign unless the US does. Europe, which supports the protocol, could try to prolong the current negotiations while trying to bring the US back in. But the US could instead seek to have the talks restarted from scratch, in an attempt to get a different kind of protocol. Oliver Meier of Vertic, a think tank in London, says that would be the worst outcome. "The current proposal is weak, but if it is made flexible enough, it can evolve. In the current political climate we are unlikely to get a mandate to discuss a stronger agreement. And we can't wait another six years." The agonising choice now is between a treaty that will do little to stop biowarriors, or nothing at all. 1900 GMT, 9 May 2001 |
