The Sixth Review Conference of the Biological Weapons Convention began today (okay, by now it’s yesterday) in sunny Geneva with the election of Ambassador Masood Khan of Pakistan as President of the Conference and an opening speech by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. States Parties to the Convention spent the remainder of the first day delivering their opening statements, which revealed that a perhaps surprising degree of common ground already exists among many nations on some key issues. One begins to hope that the States Parties might actually find their way to an agreement to do something significant to strengthen efforts against biological weapons over the next five years. Maybe even multiple somethings. The only real cloud was an exchange of accusations between the US and Iran. Not unexpected, but disappointing nonetheless.
In his speech to the Convention delegates, Secretary General Annan reprised a theme he had first struck up last April in his report “Uniting Against Terrorism” (see paragraphs 52 – 57 after the jump) – that the rise in terrorism and rapid advances in the life sciences and technology since the last Review Conference in 2001 have “transformed the environment in which the Convention operates, and altered ideas about its role and potential.” As a result, he said, we must now see the BWC as being part of an “interlinked array of tools, designed to deal with an interlinked array of problems.” He reiterated his call for the creation of a new global forum that would bring together industry, science, public health, governments and “the public writ large – in an effort to ensure that biotechnology’s advances continue to be used for the benefit of humanity while the risks are managed.”
This is important. It seems likely that some sort of forum is in the offing or else the Secretary General would not have repeated his call. Moreover, in another speech delivered two days ago he began to outline the idea in greater depth, discussing a potential initiative that would focus on two main questions: how to expand the benefits of biotechnology and life science research around the world, and how to develop a “global framework to mitigate potential risks.”
Exactly how this new global forum and the BWC would relate to each other is uncertain, not least because the forum does not yet exist. However, in his speech today the Secretary General stated that the Review Conference could make a “major contribution” to the global forum effort, and he urged the States Parties to bring their various capacities together and to build bridges to other efforts going on outside of the BWC.
The opening statements of the States Parties were about as dry and tedious as could be expected. But within the tedium, it was possible to discern some emerging agreements on several issues. Indeed, as Richard Guthrie reported earlier today for the Biological Weapons Prevention Project, if one examines the working papers that have been submitted by States Parties thus far, “similar problems are identified and similar solutions are proposed. While the papers on similar themes … may have some differences in emphasis, there are not substantive contradictions between them.”
Every State Party that spoke today stressed the need for an active intersessional process. Virtually every State Party stressed the need for active efforts to achieve universality and improve national implementation of the Convention. Most spoke as well of the need to improve the Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) system, and of the need to provide institutional support for all of these efforts. Peaceful cooperation in science and technology remains the one area of difference.
The United States has not yet submitted any working papers, and its opening statement suggests that it may go along with only some of these ideas. The U.S. called for the development and endorsement of “action plans” on both national implementation (in this case, national legislation and export controls) and universality, with annual meetings of States Parties to consider progress and follow-up between now and the Seventh Review Conference in 2011. What sort of staff support the U.S. is willing to support remains unclear. Moreover, the U.S. made no mention of CBMs, so its position on this issue also remains unclear.
The United States does support a new round of annual meetings of experts, and proposed several specific topics: disease surveillance, biosecurity (i.e. keeping dual-use equipment and biological materials secure from theft and misuse), enforcement of national legislation, and research oversight, including peer review and publication criteria to prevent research from being misused (this last is not clear from the statement, instead see the press briefing of Undersecretary of State John Rood). Of these, the first two were discussed during the previous round of annual meetings and it is hard to see what significant value would be added by additional discussion. The first topic in particular is already being widely discussed internationally today. The third and especially fourth topics are more ambitious. Since the U.S. apparently continues to oppose allowing any decisions to be made on these topics during the meetings of States Parties, perhaps some other ambitious topics could be considered (such as investigations of use or non-compliance, for example). Hopefully, with a little luck, and a lot of skill, other States Parties will be able to convince the United States to be a bit bolder.
As for the U.S.-Iran mud-fight, the U.S. accused Iran of violating the BWC, and Iran accused the U.S. of single-handedly killing the verification protocol for the BWC in 2001. Both may be right, and the U.S. allegation in particular is quite serious (a topic for another day), but throwing around accusations that you won’t (U.S.), or can’t (Iran) do anything about (except stop up the negotiations) does not a make for a good start. Unfortunately, it will probably dominate the headlines tomorrow. Let’s hope they get over it and move on.