|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
|||||||||||
| by
John
Hart,
Frida
Kuhlau
and Jacqueline Simon About the authors Project homepage |
||||||||||||
|
* Chapter
summary from the SIPRI Yearbook 2003: In 2002 the
USA and, to varying degrees, a number of other countries continued
to shift their policies away from reliance on traditional multilateral
arms control and disarmament regimes towards a greater emphasis
on bilateral and regional efforts to ensure that national measures
to criminalize the possession, development and use of chemical
and biological weapons are undertaken. Attention was also focused
on international activities such as the harmonization and strengthening
of export control regulations, improving national and international
disease surveillance, preparing for emergencies and response
measures. The extent
to which the problem of possible terrorist attacks with chemical
and biological weapons requires an intelligence and law enforcement
response and the extent to which a military response is called
for remain unclear. Many of the counter-terrorism activities
against non-state actors are of a law enforcement and intelligence
nature and have not been publicized. No suspects were arrested
or charged in 2002 for the 2001 attacks in the USA with anthrax-contaminated
letters. The states
parties to the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention concluded
the resumed session of the Fifth Review Conference in 2002. (The
first session had been abruptly suspended in 2001.) The review
conference agreed to hold expert meetings and annual meetings
of the parties until the Sixth Review Conference convenes in
2006. In early 2002
the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW),
the body that oversees implementation of the 1993 Chemical Weapons
Convention (CWC), faced financial and organizational problems.
However, the Seventh Conference of the States Parties (CSP),
which met in October, took steps to ease these difficulties.
In April the OPCW Director-General was voted out of office at
a Special Session of the CSP. The CWC is now a well-established
treaty and, for the first time, large-scale destruction operations
are under way in all four declared chemical weapon possessor
states. The use of
chemical and biological substances for law enforcement purposes
received increased attention in 2002 because of new information
about US non-lethal weapon programmes and the use of a chemical
by Russia against Chechen hostage takers in a Moscow theatre
in October 2002. In September US-led pressure in the UN Security Council and elsewhere resulted in the unanimous adoption of a new resolution on Iraq and, as a result, inspectors of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) were allowed to resume the work of the UN Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM). There was disagreement in the Security Council on what evidence or behaviour by Iraq would justify military action and on what, if any, further UN sanction this would require. UNMOVIC executive chairman Hans Blix drew a distinction between Iraqi compliance on ‘process’ versus ‘substance’. The inspections therefore highlighted the problem of verifying compliance with the implementation of relevant UN resolutions in a country whose active and full cooperation was questionable. |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
