Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
which had emerged after intensive US and Soviet negotiations, with
unanimous consent in the House of Commons and Senate. Although
there was a general concern about the BWC's lack of adequate provision
for verification, and regret that it was not part of a broader CBW arms
control system, Canadian diplomats and their defense advisors recog-
nized the advantages of having achieved the first “true disarmament of a
weapon category to have occurred since 1945.” They also recognized that
obtaining a separate ban on BW had been possible for a number of impor-
tant reasons: they had unproven military capabilities; they were morally
repugnant; and they had a reputation for being “dangerous to produce,
difficult to handle and unreliable in their operations.” On the other hand,
DEA officials remained hopeful that a CW convention was imminent and
that, when it came into being, serious deficiencies in the BWC could also
be rectified.
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After 1975, Ottawa's greatest concern was that international tensions
between the two superpowers would undermine the entire international
arms control system. This became a matter of special concern during the
early 1980s, when the new Reagan administration cancelled the nuclear
SALT II treaty process, accelerated the development of binary CW, and
questioned the effectiveness of the BWC. This last crisis gained momen-
tum during the First Review Conference of 1980, when the US delegation
claimed that the anthrax outbreak near the Russian city of Sverdlovsk
demonstrated clearly that the USSR was “pursuing the development and
probable production of biological weapons.” This image of Soviet aggres-
sive behavior was reinforced by the “Yellow Rain” controversy, associ-
ated with 1981 US allegations that “toxins and other chemical warfare
agents were developed in the Soviet Union, [and] provided to the Lao
and Vietnamese”
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(see Chapter 13 for more detailed discussion of both
allegations). Canada's response to these two incidents varied. In the case
of Sverdlovsk, the DEA did not become directly involved with the US
campaign against Soviet noncompliance, in part because of concerns
about the quality of US intelligence, and in part because of fears that the
incident might scuttle the BWC, thereby leading to another superpower
biological arms race. On the other hand, Ottawa did send two scientific
fact-finding missions to Kampuchea and Laos, in response to an invita-
tion from the UN secretary general, and to prevent the Soviet bloc “from
using toxins and other CB weapons in a variety of surrogate wars.”
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