The Iraqi Biological Weapons Program - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 169

CHAPTER 8
The Iraqi Biological
Weapons Program
GRAHAM S. PEARSON
Iraq acceded to the 1925 Geneva Protocol on 7 April 1931
with a reservation: “On condition that the Iraq government shall be
bound by the provisions of the Protocol only towards those States which
have both signed and ratified it or have acceded thereto, and that it shall
not be bound by the Protocol towards any State at enmity with Iraq
whose armed forces, or the forces of whose allies, do not respect the pro-
visions of the Protocol.” 1
Iraq signed the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) in 1972 and
ratified it in 1991 as part of the implementation of UN Security Council
Resolution 687 (1991), the ceasefire resolution following Iraq's invasion
of Kuwait.
There is little independently available information about Iraq and its
biological weapons (BW) program apart from that obtained by the United
Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) on Iraq, by its successor, the
United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission
(UNMOVIC), and by the Iraq Survey Group (ISG). While these data are
based largely on information provided by Iraq, it has become clear that
Iraq has gone to considerable lengths to conceal its WMD programs, an
effort that has included the fabrication of false documents. UNMOVIC, in
describing the Iraqi BW program, has stated that “of all its proscribed
weapons programs, Iraq's biological warfare (BW) program was perhaps
the most secretive. Iraq has stated that knowledge of the program was
kept to a select few officials and that, to maintain secrecy, special mea-
sures were taken.” 2 Consequently it was not surprising that Iraq's efforts
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