Hurdles Face Effort to Establish U.N. Agency to Monitor Proliferation of Biological Weapons, Missiles

By Chris Schneidmiller
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Several nations are pressing for creation of a U.N. agency to monitor biological weapons and missiles, but in the face of U.S. opposition such a body might never be anything more than a notion.

Unlike nuclear and chemical weapons, biological agents and missiles are only nominally monitored by the international community. There has never been a multilateral treaty on missiles, and efforts to create an oversight body for the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention died in 2001 when the United States refused to approve a protocol to establish a set of treaty compliance provisions.

Late last year France, the United Kingdom and other countries recommended making the U.N. Monitoring, Inspection and Verification Commission a permanent agency once its mandate in Iraq is finished (see GSN, Nov. 26, 2003). 

UNMOVIC has about 50 full-time personnel and another 300 “roster” inspectors who can be called to duty within a matter of days or weeks, said agency spokesman Ewen Buchanan. Over the 13-year life of UNMOVIC and its predecessor, the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq, these inspectors honed search, identification and interview skills that could be transferred to work on the biological weapons treaty and missile proliferation, researchers said. It is unlikely that any other organization could take up that work, they added.

“They have the expertise. They have the experience.  It would be crazy to let that disappear because there is nothing on the horizon that would take its place,” said Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, a biological weapons expert at the State University of New York at Purchase. 

Another U.N. nonproliferation body could not be born without support from the permanent Security Council members. However, the United States does “not see a need for such an organization and would oppose it as unnecessary,” said State Department spokesman Kurtis Cooper.

“The United States strongly believes that the state parties who are members of existing regimes and arms control treaties themselves should determine whether and if so what types of inspection arrangements they require,” Cooper said. “We also see no need for a permanent inspectorate to manage missile programs as there is no global treaty arrangement that might provide a basis for any inspections,” he added.

That means nonproliferation advocates will need to look to more modest measures to meet their goals for curbing the spread of these weapons, said Jonathan Tucker, a senior researcher for the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

There are at least 10 countries now known or suspected to have biological weapons programs, including Russia, North Korea, India, Pakistan and Egypt. Two dozen nations have short-range ballistic missiles, and a “handful of countries” have longer-range weapons, said Joseph Cirincione, director for nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The level of danger posed by these weapons is “a subject of hot debate,” Cirincione said. Missiles are most likely to be used in a regional conflict in the Middle East or parts of Asia, he said.

Even considering the U.S. anthrax attacks in 2001, biological weapons are generally too difficult to develop or control to be used offensively, particularly by terrorists, Cirincione said. Tucker argued that developing nations could seek biological agents as a strategic deterrent, and that terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda are increasingly pursuing biological weapons independently or with the aid of a state sponsor.

The 151 parties to the Biological Weapons Convention pledge not to develop, produce or stockpile biological agents for nonpeaceful uses. There is no effective international mechanism, however, to restrict any nation from working with anthrax or botulism, much less terrorists unconcerned by treaty law, experts said.

The convention’s statutes allowing for consultation and investigation on alleged biological weapons efforts have been used only once, Tucker said, with a questionable claim by Cuba in 1997 that the United States dropped a crop-killing insect on the island. No evidence was found to support the allegation.

The U.N. secretary-general has the only other international authority to pursue allegations of biological weapons use. Without a standing investigative body, though, “he would have to rely on hastily assembled ad hoc inspectors contributed by member states, with miscellaneous levels of training and no teamwork experience. Delays, clumsiness and suspicions of bias would be difficult to avoid,” Rosenberg wrote in a recent article in Disarmament Diplomacy entitled “Enforcing WMD Treaties: Consolidating a U.N. Role.”

The United Nations has conducted a small number of field investigations into allegations of chemical weapons use, but suspected nations are not legally required to cooperate with the efforts, which ended either with inconclusive findings or a lack of action by the international community, Tucker said.

For example, Tucker and his colleague Raymond Zilinskas described in a 2002 Arms Control Today article how the United States charged the governments of Laos, Cambodia and Afghanistan with using chemical weapons against their people in the late 1970s. Those allegations could not be proven due to the delay in organizing an investigation, resistance from the countries and questionable testimony from witnesses. While it was proven that Iran and Iraq both used chemical weapons during their 1980s war, neither country was penalized and the enemies continued using those agents.

“The record is fairly checkered of these investigations in the past,” Tucker said. “It’s better than nothing, but I think it’s fairly weak.”

The Biological Weapons Convention also suffers from lack of an enforcement body, said Angela Woodward, legal researcher for the Verification Research, Training and Information Center (VERTIC) in London.

Treaty parties suspected of possessing biological weapons programs — such as China and North Korea — have little to fear as the U.N. secretary-general is only authorized to investigate alleged uses of biological weapons.

Each treaty party also pledges to prohibit any biological weapons activity within its borders or areas of control. Only 21 percent of member states responded by August 2003 to a VERTIC survey on treaty enforcement measures; the results and responses indicated that many of the countries, particularly developing nations, had no legislation barring people from producing or keeping biological agents, VERTIC said (see GSN, Aug. 13, 2003).

“This sort of thing needs to be addressed,” Woodward said. “Unless states have efficient oversight of their material there is risk of diversion. If someone wants to get their hands on it, they will,” she added.

A standing body of 30-35 inspectors, with access to a larger pool of investigators, could manage oversight of missiles and biological weapons, Rosenberg wrote in her article.

The U.N. Security Council could convert UNMOVIC for the new task, or develop a smaller organization once UNMOVIC disbands, she said. In the absence of a treaty, the council also could set guidelines on the existence of missiles, Rosenberg said.

The organization’s duties could include intrusive inspections of suspect countries, inspections upon request by countries wishing to allay suspicions, developing guidelines for inspection and monitoring procedures, and preparing databases of sites of concern, according to Rosenberg.

Time needed to begin investigations would be minimized by having a working organization answering to a 15-member Security Council that is theoretically able to quickly initiate action. The council would also give backbone to the rules with potential penalties ranging from economic sanctions to military action against violators, Cirincione said.

Having an international inspection agency would establish “as an international norm” the idea that countries should not engage in proliferation of missiles and biological weapons, he said.

Experts could also help countries prepare legislation banning the development and use of biological weapons, and to submit the declarations required by the Biological Weapons Convention, Woodward said.

“There’s a distinct lack of assistance for countries that need it,” she said.

The U.S. reluctance to allow a multilateral nonproliferation body is not surprising, Tucker said, noting the Bush administration’s decision not to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and to withdraw from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty.

There is concern about a biological weapons inspection agency. Biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies fear that opening their doors to inspectors means potentially opening their doors to industrial espionage, Tucker said. Equipment used to make weapon agents can be identical to the equipment for making vaccines or materials, he said.

The Bush administration’s focus has been on pressing nations to individually approve antibiological weapon legislation and to slow the spread of weapons of mass destruction (see GSN, March 25). If there is a change in leadership following the November presidential election, a new administration might consider some toughening of investigative capability for the Biological Weapons Convention, but is still unlikely to support a protocol body performing routine inspections, Tucker said.

“The utility of regular inspections is considered fairly limited,” Tucker said.

Nations backing an investigative organization are looking for the right time to bring the item to the United Nations, Rosenberg said. They could offer a “tradeoff” of U.N. aid in Iraq for U.S. support for the protocol organization, she said.

It will be up to the U.N. members to decide if they want another WMD inspection organization, said a source at the United Nations. There has been no formal proposal, and no quick answer to the issue is expected.

Even if the United States came on board, various issues would have to be addressed to make the search body a reality. Without an international treaty, there is no legal basis for an organization on missile nonproliferation, the U.N. source said. UNMOVIC is funded by the Iraqi oil-for-food program, a source of money unlikely to be available to a successor. 

UNMOVIC itself might not be ready to fade away, spokesman Buchanan said. Researchers said the agency’s mandate could end as early as June 30, the scheduled date for transfer of power in Iraq. Buchanan said, though, that options include the designation of inspectors for long-term monitoring in Iraq. “We continue until the [Security] Council says otherwise,” he said.

A less ambitious option would be to maintain a roster of experts who could consult with the United Nations on biological weapons and missiles, the U.N. source said.

In the meantime, the eight nongovernmental organizations founded the BioWeapons Prevention Project in 2002 to track and report on biological weapons projects. While the “civil society watchdog” has no enforcement authority, its aim is to show nations that such activities are being scrutinized.

Representatives from BWC member states will discuss investigations of biological weapons use and suspicious disease outbreaks in December in Geneva during the annual treaty meeting (see GSN, Nov. 18, 2003). Specific proposals are still being developed, but the United States will press to increase the secretary general’s authority by having nations agree to cooperate with investigations, Tucker said.

No decisions made this year could be implemented until the convention’s sixth review conference in 2006. 

In an article in the current issue of the Monterey Institute’s Nonproliferation Review, Tucker recommends several actions for the session, including making treaty confidence-building measures mandatory, creating a small office to handle documentation and offer support to member nations, and having nations agree to keep watch over their biological defense research programs with an independent review process.

In the absence of one overarching organization, it will take work by the United Nations, treaty parties and nongovernmental organizations to slow the spread of biological weapons, Tucker said.

“There’s no silver bullet,” he said. “It’s going to take a variety of different measures working together to address the problem,” Tucker added.

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