POLITICS: Arms Control Official Rejects U.S. Demand He Quit

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 20 2002 (IPS) - The head of an international arms control body rejected Wednesday a U.S. demand that he resign from office because of alleged mismanagement, setting the stage for a showdown when the agency’s governing council meets later this week.

“I cannot allow a precedent to be established where a director-general resigns under pressure from a group of member states, without any evidence of wrongdoing or malfeasance whatsoever,” said Jose Mauricio Bustani, head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

The 145-member OPCW, which has a cooperation agreement with the United Nations, is an independent body based in the Hague, Netherlands.

Bustani, a former Brazilian ambassador, is serving his second five-year term as director-general of the OPCW, which is mandated to ferret out and destroy chemical munitions worldwide under the provisions of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).

Since the CWC came into force in April 1997, the OPCW has conducted hundreds of inspections of chemical weapons production facilities worldwide. OPCW inspectors have also monitored the destruction of more than 3,500 tonnes of chemical agents and over one million chemical munitions.

Bustani said there has been a whispering campaign to “bring pressure on me to resign.”

The United States, he said, had “totally (and) inappropriately” approached his home country, Brazil, and urged Brazilian authorities to reassign him. They did so, he said, “as though I were still functioning as a Brazilian diplomat.”

“At the very same time, it was approaching other member states to have them bring pressure on Brazil to have me resign,” Bustani complained of the United States. But it was only on Feb. 28, he said, that the United States formally asked him to resign from his job.

“No reasons were given other than the supposed need for a change in ‘management style’. As recently as yesterday, my inquiries on this matter produced no further explanation,” Bustani said Wednesday.

Spelling out the official U.S. position, State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher said Tuesday that Washington had lost confidence in Bustani.

“The United States and others don’t believe the organisation can continue to fulfil its primary mission of eliminating chemical weapons under its current leadership,” he said. “We and others have urged the director general to resign for the good of the organisation.”

The United States is planning to sponsor a no-confidence resolution calling for Bustani’s resignation at an upcoming meeting of the OPCW’s 41-member governing council.

A senior U.S. administration official was quoted by the New York Times Wednesday as saying that a majority of the members were expected to support the U.S. resolution or to abstain from voting, paving the way for Bustani’s ouster.

The official also said the campaign against Bustani had nothing to do with the aggressive U.S. policy against Iraq, which is said to be secretly developing chemical and biological weapons.

The United States, he said, was not only dissatisfied with Bustani’s overall performance but was peeved at his statement that the OPCW should be given a more significant role in the U.S.-led war against global terrorism and in responding to the use of chemical weapons worldwide.

Of the world’s two onetime major producers of chemical weapons, the United States is reported to have about 30,000 tons of chemical agents and Russia, about 40,000 tons.

In March 1998, the OPCW was engaged in a political skirmish with the United States, which exercised its right to determine the composition of a U.N. arms inspection team probing U.S. chemical weapons facilities.

Since it was protective of its sensitive military facilities, the United States struck out the names of Cuban and Iranian nationals from a list of U.N. arms inspectors who were expected to visit U.S. facilities under the CWC.

Long before an inspection team visits a country possessing chemical weapons – such as the United States or Russia – the government is given a list of inspectors who should have unrestricted access to arms facilities.

But Washington rejected both Cubans and Iranians from U.N. inspection teams, presumably for political and security reasons.

The OPCW has an annual budget of about 60 million dollars and has more than 500 employees on its payroll. The United States is the largest single contributor, accounting for about 22 percent of the budget.

Criticising U.S. tactics to oust him from office, Bustani said: “You are asked to try to preserve a multilateral treaty by undermining the very foundations of multilateralism; by undermining the independence of the organisation; by after-the-fact condoning of interference with the independence of the director general.”