U.S. rejects biological weapons treaty
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SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Friday, July 27, 2001
WASHINGTON Ñ The United States has formally rejected a revision of
the biological weapons convention.
U.S. officials said a treaty being drafted at the United Nations would
hurt both national security as well as American industry. The treaty was to
have been completed by November. So far, 143 nations have ratified the
accord.
U.S. diplomats and officials said the administration has concluded
that the proposed treaty would leave the United States vulnerable to those
who want to obtain industrial and security secrets while leaving
rogue states free to continue their biological weapons development. Iraq,
Iran, Libya, North Korea and Syria are believed to either developing
biological weapons or harboring ambitions to do so.
"The concerns that were expressed today in Geneva, substantively, are
precisely the same concerns that were expressed during the Clinton
administration," a senior U.S. administration official said. "There are some
37 items on which there is unanimous interagency consensus in the United
States government that make this protocol unacceptable."
The decision by the Bush administration appears to end seven years of
efforts to improve the enforcement provisions of the 1972 treaty to ban the
use of biological weapons.
The revisions included inspections of suspected biological weapons
sites. The 1972 treaty failed to include provisions for enforcement.
"In our assessment, the draft protocol would put national security and
confidential business information at risk," U.S. chief negotiator Donald
Mahley said in a statement from Geneva. "The draft protocol will not improve
our ability to verify Biological Weapons Convention compliance. It will not
enhance our confidence in compliance and will do little to deter those
countries seeking to develop biological weapons."
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