Document Notes Support for Intensification of Work on a Verification System
GENEVA, 29 November (UN Information Service) -- The Fourth Review Conference of the States Parties to the Biological Weapons Convention took note today of a report of its Committee of the Whole which indicated, among other things, that there was wide support for intensification of the work of an ad hoc group on the design of a verification protocol for the international treaty. The Committee of the Whole, over the course of two-and-a-half days, had reviewed the application of the Convention on an article-by-article basis.
The report also noted that States parties had affirmed that the prohibitions in article 1 on development, production, stockpiling, and acquisition of biological weapons were considered to apply to all potential scientific and technological developments in the field. It said that countries had expressed varying opinions on an amendment proposed by Iran that would add to the language of the Convention an explicit prohibition of the use of biological weapons. Some national delegations felt that the prohibitions on development and stockpiling of such weapons amounted to a practical prohibition of use, while others considered that an explicit ban was necessary to avoid any possible confusion on the issue.
The two-week Conference -- formally titled the Fourth Review Conference of the Parties to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction -- which concludes 6 December, has as its basic task consideration of proposals to strengthen the treaty, the first multilateral disarmament instrument to ban a whole category of weapons. There are close to 140 States parties to the Convention.
Statements in Debate
MOUNIR ZAHRAN (Egypt) said all Middle East countries with the exception of Israel had joined the zone established in 1990 to make the region free of all weapons of mass destruction -- nuclear, chemical, or biological. The exception represented by that country, which possessed nuclear capability without any international control, led to serious security apprehension in the
Middle East and threatened the effectiveness of all the relevant international instruments in this regard in the region; it was especially worrisome that Israel had not signed or acceded to the Biological Weapons Convention. Egypt, meanwhile, was concerned that the Convention did not explicitly ban the use of biological weapons and felt the treaty needed an efficient verification regime.
ANDRE MERNIER (Belgium) said the country strongly supported the goals of the Convention and was in the process of withdrawing its reservations to the 1925 Geneva Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Cases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare.
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