Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
provisions had “not yet been activated” by the Council of the West-
ern European Union because “the Council have so far not been able
to reach agreement on detailed regulations for the control of biological
weapons.”
10
In the early 1960s the issue of BW control and disarmament centered
on the use of BW and the nonratification of the Geneva Protocol by the
US. UK and US discussions of disarmament proposals for CBW in 1963
give an early indication that the US government rejected CBW disar-
mament proposals because they might establish a precedent for nuclear
weapons disarmament. In discussions between UK and US officials re-
garding the 1925 Geneva Protocol or new declarations regarding chemi-
cal or biological weapons, the US rejected ideas about restrictions on use
and about the reduction or elimination of CBW not for any substantive
reasons relating to CBW, but because of their possible effect on nuclear
policy. Reporting to the Foreign Office in London, the UK embassy in
Washington stated that the US would not “subscribe to any new declara-
tion on chemical and biological weapons. In their view the principle in-
volved is the same as that for declarations about the use of nuclear weap-
ons, which are included in the category of weapons of mass destruction.
Therefore a declaration about chemical and biological weapons would
prejudice the principle which we have all maintained about the use of
nuclear weapons.”
11
The principle about the use of nuclear weapons was
that NATO maintained the right to use nuclear weapons against a Soviet
conventional attack in Europe in order to deter Soviet aggression.
The effect of nuclear policy on CBW policy was not limited to the US
government. In March 1963 the UK delegation to the Eighteen Nation
Committee on Disarmament (ENDC) wrote to the Foreign Office regard-
ing the “alternative possibilities of a UK proposal for a reaffirmation of
the 1925 Geneva Convention, or for the establishment of a study group
on reductions of chemical and biological weapons.” The minister of state
considered that neither of these alternatives was advisable, because “it is
quite likely that a Western proposal for a ban on the use of chemical and
biological weapons would be exploited to our detriment in the Confer-
ence by the Soviet bloc as a precedent for a similar ban on the use of nu-
clear weapons: and on this issue the Soviet attitude would attract the
sympathy of a number of the unaligned delegates.”
12
In 1963 and 1964 the US was carrying out studies of the problems asso-
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