http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010725/ts/arms_germwarfare_american_dc.html
U.S. Rejects Plan to Enforce Germ Warfare Ban
By Richard Waddington,
Wednesday, July 25, 2001, 5:26 AM ET
GENEVA (Reuters) - The United States, again rowing against most world
opinion, on Wednesday rejected as unworkable a proposed international
plan for enforcing a 30-year ban on using germs as a weapon of war.
In a speech to a special drafting committee in Geneva, Washington's
representative Ambassador Donald Mahley said the United States could
not support the proposal, the result of nearly a decade of
international wrangling.
``In our assessment, the draft protocol would put national security
and confidential business information at risk,'' he said.
The plan, drawn up by Ambassador Tibor Toth of Hungary, chairman of
the Ad Hoc negotiating group, was designed to meet a mandate from the
140-state 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention to produce a
consensus on measures to make the ban enforceable by the end of this
year.
Unlike other multilateral arms accords, the biological weapons ban
contains no mechanism to ensure compliance.
While reaffirming its commitment to combating the spread of biological
weapons, the United States said the measures outlined in the draft
would not achieve their goal.
The draft, which other members of the 54-state Ad Hoc committee have
said at least formed the basis for further negotiation, would oblige
member states to make public sites that could be used for the
development of biological weapons.
It also sets out a series of steps for verification, including spot
checks.
But the U.S. said the checks would not stop cheating by states wanting
to develop a biological weapons capacity and could open the door to
industrial espionage.
``The mechanisms envisioned in the protocol would not achieve their
objectives and...trying to do more would simply raise the risk to
legitimate United States activities,'' Mahley said.
INTERNATIONAL ISOLATION
A number of countries are believed to have developed, or to be
developing, the capability to have a biological weapons arsenal and
rapid developments in the field of genetics only increase anxiety
about the potential for devastation of such arms.
The European Union said earlier this week that while the Toth text did
not meet all its concerns, it believed it would strengthen the
existing treaty against biological weapons.
It was the latest foreign policy issue on which the Bush
administration has distanced itself from its traditional European
allies and appeared isolated internationally.
Earlier this week, Washington was alone in rejecting the Kyoto treaty
to contain global warming through the limiting of the emission of
so-called greenhouse gasses.
In order to be approved, the draft germ warfare proposal needed
consensus support within the Ad Hoc committee.
The committee had been due to continue meeting until August 17 in a
bid to meet the deadline imposed by the Convention, which convenes on
November 19.
It was not immediately clear what action the Ad Hoc group would take
in view of the U.S. stance
