DISARMAMENT: Chemical weapons pact generates scant interest

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 27 1995 (IPS) - Only 25 countries have ratified a much-ballyhooed U.N. convention against chemical weapons.

Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali has written twice this year urging governments to ratify the convention. But “the responses have been disappointing,” Under-Secretary-General Marrack Goulding recently told U.N. delegates here.

The treaty, the ‘Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and of their Destruction,’ needs 65 ratifications for enforcement.

But only 25 mostly Third World nations have ratified it, including Albania, Australia, Lesotho, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Mauritius, Mexico, Paraguay, Uruguay, Seychelles, Germany, Greece, Sweden, and Spain.

Since Jan. 1993 when the convention was open for signature in Paris, 159 of the 185 U.N. member States have signed it. But the convention needs 65 ratifications for entry into force.

Arab states have said they are reluctant to give up the right to have chemical weapons unless Israel formally renounces its nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. And the two largest declared possessors of chemical weapons — Russia and the United States — have yet to ratify the convention.

Ian Kenyon, Executive Secretary of the Preparatory Commission for the Future Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, told delegates there was “growing concern” that the United States and Russia had not taken the step.

“Their absence from the list of ratifiers would seriously affect the meaningful implementation and entry into force of the convention,” he said. “A number of countries who have yet to ratify the convention are waiting for them to take the lead.”

Stressing the need to bring the convention into legal force as soon as possible, Kenyon said “the opportunity for eliminating an entire class of weapons of mass destruction should not be frittered away.”

The United States is said to possess a stockpile of about 30,000 tons of chemical warfare agents but the Department of Defence asserts that only about 10 percent is fully serviceable.

Russia is said to possess a stockpile of up to 50,000 tons of weapons, but that claim is being disputed by Western intelligence agencies who say the Russians have more.

Besides these two countries, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has identified more than 20 countries it says have either developed or are developing chemical weapons capabilities.

The list includes Iraq, Iran, China, North Korea, Taiwan, Myanmar, India, Pakistan, Syria, Israel, Egypt and Libya.

The Washington-based weekly, Defence News, said last month that U.S. air force officials plan to spend about 3.9 million dollars in 1996 on a programme code-named ‘Agent Defeat’ to develop a family of munitions to render chemical and biological weapons facilities useless.

The idea is to neutralise these weapons without allowing deadly agents to escape into the atmosphere.

“The ideal thing would be to drop a giant cup over the top of these facilities, as opposed to blowing them up and spreading this stuff around,” an air force official was quoted as saying.

A Counter-proliferation Support Programme funded by the U.S. Department of Defence has given high priority to the development of new weapons capable of identifying and destroying weapons of mass destruction.

But one of the most awkward problems facing the United Nations is how to distinguish between the production of chemical weapons and chemical products for industry and agriculture. Phosgene, described as a product used in the manufacture of plastics, was one of the major chemical agents that killed thousands of soldiers in the World War I.

The Washington-based Council for a Livable World Education Fund says World War I was the only instance of large-scale reciprocal chemical warfare.

The first significant chemical attack took place near Ypres, Belgium in Apr. 1915, when German troops opened the valves on nearly 6,000 cylinders of compressed chlorine gas. The huge toxic cloud which swept over the Allied lines killed hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of unprepared soldiers and injured many more.

As soon as gas masks were developed to protect against chlorine, new gases were fielded.

Since 1914, chemical weapons and irritant agents have been deployed by warring parties in several conflicts: Italy against Ethiopia in 1935-36; Japan against China in 1939; Germany against Jews in concentration camps in 1940-45; the United States in Indo- China in 1961-72; Egypt in Yemen in 1963-1967; and Iraq against Iran in 1983-88.

DISARMAMENT: Chemical weapons pact generates scant interest

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 27 1995 (IPS) - Only 25 countries have ratified a much-ballyhooed U.N. convention against chemical weapons.
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