The European Union (EU) has notified the U.S. that it is in the best interest of world security to finalize a binding compliance protocol to the 1975 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) this year. If the U.S. does not sign on to the compromise text developed over the past six years, the EU "sees no chance of renegotiating a new mandate with a more 'restricted' approach." The U.S. wants to limit the protocol to declarations and challenges.

The U.S. will have to announce its position either during negotiations later this month or in November, when the Fifth Review Conference meets in Geneva. The official Bush Administration position is that no high-level decision has yet been made, though an interagency policy review has recommended that the compromise text be rejected, C&EN has learned.

Adverse fallout from the U.S.'s decision to bow out of the Kyoto protocol on global warming has the Administration searching for alternatives to the compromise BWC protocol text. At a June 28 briefing for diplomats, the State Department circulated three options, two of which are already part of the compromise text. The third option, an unnamed mechanism outside "structured arms control approaches," may allude to a nascent National Academy of Sciences effort to have scientists police themselves.

However, former U.S. ambassador James Leonard warned Congress last week that such alternatives would not be acceptable to other countries.

[Previous Story] [Next Story]

Chemical & Engineering News
Copyright © 2001 American Chemical Society