Once given up as a dead issue in this Congress, consideration of the international Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) is now slated to be brought before the full Senate for action before April 30th. While the treaty had been signed by 159 countries as of this past fall, it has been ratified by fewer than one-third of them, well short of the 65 required for the treaty to take effect. Despite a number of hearings, the CWC essentially languished since it became open for signing in January 1993. Even when the Democrats were in control of Congress, the Administration didn't exert much pressure to get the treaty ratified. Then, when Jesse Helms (R-NC) became chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and expressed strong opposition to the pact, it appeared moribund. Senator Helms put his opposition to the treaty in writing to the President, saying his objections included "compelling questions about verification, Russian compliance, Russian binary weapons programs and the cost of the Convention." The senator was also stalling on the Chemical Weapons Convention (and on a vote to ratify the START II treaty, which is discussed on page 21) for negotiating leverage over State Department functions and ambassadorial nominations. Surprising many, however, in December when he reached an arrangement with the Democrats, Helms released his block on the treaties, setting them up for final votes. Very Ambitious The CWC would be the first treaty ostensibly demanding that an entire class of weapons be destroyed, not merely curtailed. Not only would it be against international law for countries to use such weapons, but proponents say it would also be illegal to develop, produce, or possess them. All of which is mighty audacious, considering that such materials don't require a fleet of intercontinental bombers for delivery, but perhaps only a metal drum. In January 1995, when more than two years had gone by and there were still 140 or so countries holding out from ratification, United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali chastised the recalcitrant governments, saying, "This is not an acceptable state of affairs for the international community." In the subsequent year, the number of ratifying nations rose from 21 to 42. Proponents boast that the history of the convention is long and bipartisan. It was, for instance, recommended with gusto in 1984 by Vice President George Bush who, as the Washington Post has reported delightedly, "broke an impasse by offering to subject U.S. chemical manufacturers to mandatory inspections."

When Bush was President, Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger called the pact "an important part of an international structure that would increase U.S. and global security in the next century." According to the Washington Post, if the U.S. doesnt sign now, Washington will "suddenly lose its influence over the monitoring organization now being set up in the Hague. There will be no American inspectors. The United States will have no access to the inspection reports." Moreover, acknowledges the Post, the chemical industry in the U.S. would be tightly restricted and would have to operate "under regulations that it intended to apply to the renegades such as Libya, Syria, Iraq, and North Korea. The American chemical industry doesn't deserve this outrageous punishment." In other words, the U.S. has been placed in a position to be blackmailed, and the Post is working on the terms.

Keep in mind the next time someone argues that a UN treaty is meaningless that an international convention could force the U.S. and American companies to knuckle under to global bureaucrats. The pattern with the CWC is similar to that of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) of 1972. In 1969, before signing on to that pact, President Richard Nixon unilaterally signed an executive order outlawing offensive biological weapons in this country. Iraq also signed on to the BWC. But that didn't stop Saddam Hussein from loading up missiles with anthrax and botulinum toxin before the Gulf War. While the U.S. may desist from using such weapons, that hardly matters to dictators such as Hussein, who has used nerve and mustard agents against Kurds in his own country. U.S. companies even helped Iraq develop chemical and biological capability with "dual-use" facilities. For example, Bechtel Corporation was the general contractor for a huge petrochemical complex some 70 kilometers south of Baghdad, a factory capable of producing both petrochemicals and the compounds required for mustard and nerve gases. Moscow's Mask In the case of chemical weapons, Washington had already renounced them even before the international convention was negotiated. Moscow also expressed rhetorical opposition to such killers. Never mind that a top scientist named Vil Mirzayanov, who worked for more than 26 years on Soviet chemical weapons, has repeatedly acknowledged that the Russians continued to work on chemical weapons after renouncing them. Mirzayanov, who was imprisoned in Russia in 1992 and 1994 for writing about the program with which he was involved, used to be against the CWC. Now, after two stints in prison, the word is that he is in favor of ratification. CWC proponents brag about how much extra leverage there will be over Russia, hoping, of course, that no one remembers how the "international community" invariably gives Moscow free rein.

A Moscow cover-up in this field did get moderate media coverage in Europe, and some concern was also expressed by Senator Helms. The episode involved retired Russian Lieutenant General Anatoly Kuntsevich, who was involved in the CWC negotiation and who headed the conversion program for Moscow's chemical and biological programs. Dr. Michael Waller, president of the Washington-based American Foreign Policy Council, described the case in the December 18, 1995 Wall Street Journal Europe, pointing out that Kuntsevich "was also chairman of President Boris Yeltsin's committee on safeguarding and dismantling chemical and biological weapons when he allegedly smuggled 1,800 pounds of nerve gas components to an unidentified Middle Eastern country believed to be Syria in 1993." Waller, who interviewed Vil Mirzayanov in Moscow, reported that Mirzayanov then opposed the CWC in part because he knew that General Kuntsevich "and other CWC negotiators had inserted loopholes into the treaty language that would permit manufacture and export of nerve agents like Novichok. In his words, Kuntsevich and company had rigged the CWC language to continue the chemical arms race.'" Raising Consciousness It is always convenient when a dramatic event or threatened disaster can be misapplied to boost stalled legislation. Such was the case with the Japanese sect called Aum Shinrikyo, reportedly responsible for the lethal nerve gas attack in Tokyo last March that caused a dozen deaths and sickened more than 5,000 in the Japanese subway system. Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA), ranking minority member of the Senate permanent committee on investigations, requested a congressional study of the incident, which was performed by the panels Democratic staff. A network of front companies was then uncovered that the sect had sought to use, including Russian scientists and providers of U.S. arms equipment. The cult, said investigators (relying largely on Japanese and U.S. intelligence), even sent a delegation to Zaire, perhaps on a mission concerning the highly virulent Ebola virus thought to have originated in that region. There was speculation that the cult sought the eventual takeover of the Japanese government. "It is out of James Bond," said Nunn on the CBS program Face the Nation. Nunn also commented that the "scenario of a terrorist group either obtaining or manufacturing and using a weapon of mass destruction is no longer the stuff of science fiction or adventure movies. It is a reality which has already come to pass and one which, if we do not take appropriate measures, will increasingly threaten us in the future." But such a threat cannot be negotiated away through international treaties. CWC Critics Though Congress, lulled by the "bipartisan" support of Presidents Bush and Clinton, has been too complacent, this convention does have influential critics.

One such is Dr. Kathleen Bailey, a CWC expert who was an assistant director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and who is now a senior fellow at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. In an op-ed piece in the December 12, 1995 Washington Post, she cited several arguments against ratification, including the huge costs that would be borne by U.S. companies. She contended that it would not come into force without Senate approval, since "other countries are waiting for the United States to ratify so that it will pay the costs of implementation...." Production of chemical weapons is easy to conceal, Dr. Bailey noted, explaining that a plant capable of producing 100 tons of phosgene annually can fit into a space of only 40 square feet. The chemicals to be controlled are listed by the CWC, opening the door for weapons made from compounds that don't appear on the list. Moreover, wrote Dr. Bailey, while terrorists won't declare agents, neither can it be verified that nations have gotten rid of all stockpiles. "The case of Iraq proves the point that well-hidden chemical weapons are unfindable," stated Dr. Bailey. "U.N. officials revealed in October that Iraq may still have chemical caches, despite four years of anytime-anywhere inspections." In the forefront among opponents of the CWC has been Frank Gaffney Jr., director of the Center for Security Policy and a former Assistant Secretary of Defense. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in August 1994, Gaffney described the unverifiability of whether or not a party is complying with the treaty, and the cost that would be placed on U.S. companies (including those in the pharmaceutical, petroleum, electronics, textile, mining, aerospace, and other industries), who would be burdened with data collection, reporting requirements, and inspections. Furthermore, emphasized Gaffney, the CWC "will actually adversely affect U.S. national security by: eliminating a proven deterrent to chemical attack; eroding defenses against such attack; degrading intelligence about the chemical warfare threat; and denying our military the latitude to use non-toxic chemical agents like tear gas in critical situations." Yet, as Gaffney also noted, the treaty doesn't even do what its proponents claim, since chemicals such as chlorine and hydrogen cyanide (which were used with devastating results in World War I) are exempted from the CWC because they have so many legitimate industrial uses. The CWC is more than ineffectual, costly, and unverifiable. Typical of globalist solutions, it would do the opposite of what it claims, and impose a severe threat to this nations security.

What is next? Chemical Weapons Storm Toopers raiding private homes for the rampant supplies of kitchen amonia?

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