Analysis and Implications - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 371

yearly Review Conferences. The current inter-review conference process,
agreed upon in the resumed 2001-02 Fifth Review Conference, may help
to encourage the implementation of the Convention in some limited as-
pects in some states, but it does not address the two fundamental weak-
nesses of the BWC regime, which are the lack of any effective compliance
verification system and the lack of an organization to sustain the Conven-
tion between its review conferences. If the legally binding instrument
had been agreed, both of these deficiencies would have been corrected,
as it would have necessitated the establishment of an organization com-
parable to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
(OPCW), which, in a division of labor with the States Parties, implements
and oversees the CWC. 9
The stumbling block to progress in strengthening the BWC is clearly
the issue of verification. The question therefore is: Can a monitoring sys-
tem involving declarations, and a process for validation of those declara-
tions, be crafted that can create sufficient transparency to detect militarily
significant, state-level, offensive programs without exposing crucial na-
tional security and commercial proprietary information to espionage?
Most States Parties involved in the BWC-strengthening negotiations of
the 1990s thought that a solution was possible. Indeed, many felt that a
more intrusive solution would have been acceptable. A small number of
states, however, were unenthusiastic about the course of the negotia-
tions, and the US eventually refused to accept the proposed text—or any
such text based on the agreed negotiation mandate. In its statement to
the States Parties rejecting the proposed text, the US plainly offered as its
overriding concerns the adequacy of the proposed compliance monitor-
ing system and the safety of national security information.
Significantly, both the CWC and the BWC legally binding instrument
were designed with a three-pillar system of declarations, visits, and chal-
lenge investigations that would make significant violations difficult to
hide. Commentators have had difficulty in seeing how the system for the
CWC was acceptable while that proposed for the BWC was not. The BWC
design was based on much research into how visits and investigations
could be carried out in numerous States Parties to both the CWC and
BWC, and on a two-year-long investigation (VEREX) of what might be
an effective BWC system. The BWC negotiators were therefore not try-