Deadlock is looming as the 144 countries that belong to the Biological Weapons Convention enter the final phase of their three-week meeting in Geneva. By late Friday, they are supposed to decide whether even to go on meeting regularly, and if they do, whether to continue discussing ways to strengthen the treaty.
If there is no agreement, the 1972 treaty banning the “production and stockpiling” of germ weapons will become merely a statement of intent. It will no longer provide a forum where countries can work together against biological weapons.
That now looks possible. Three main camps have emerged, with the US and Third World countries diametrically opposed, and the European Union attempting to broker a compromise that will at least keep treaty countries talking.
Earlier this year, the US rejected a protocol to the treaty that all other countries had agreed, which would have made members exchange information and submit to inspections aimed at bolstering the ban on biological weapons.
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US opposition
In Geneva the US has asked countries instead to call for inspections of suspicious disease outbreaks by the UN. It is also pushing for laws making possession of bioweapons illegal, and controls on biotechnology and pathogens.
But it opposes any continuation of talks among treaty members aimed at setting up anything like the rejected protocol. Third World countries, especially Iran and China, insist such talks must continue. The European Union is trying to bridge the gap with a proposal that treaty members at least keep meeting annually to discuss common concerns, starting before next April.
The EU also wants members to set up working groups of scientific experts to monitor developments in biotechnology which could pose new threats, or new means of tracing or treating germ weapons. According to observers in Geneva, the US opposes even this, fearing it could lead to renewed talks about a compliance protocol.
Last meeting?
But without a continuing forum of any kind, the treaty risks becoming little more than an agreement on paper, says Oliver Meier of Vertic, a pro-arms control group in London.
“Unlike other treaties it has no secretariat, no existence in the real world, apart from meetings of members,” he says.
And the Treaty does not even require those meetings – the members themselves must call for each successive one. If there is no agreement on a final declaration in Geneva, they will not get another chance, and this meeting could be their last.
