Conference on Disarmament

The Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction, shortly described as Convention on general and comprehensive prohibition of chemical weapons, or Chemical Weapons Convention, abbreviated as CWC, was adopted in 1992 after complex negotiations on the basis of The Conference on Disarmament (and previous multilateral negotiating fora in Geneva), lasting nearly a quarter of a century mainly due to the worldwide spread of chemical industry and relatively easy... 

The author, Professor Jiri Matousek, PhD, DSc., Dipl. Eng., was working nearly 40 years in R D for Chemical Corps, Medical Services and Civil Protection, inter alia as Head of the Czechoslovak NBC Defence R D Establishment (now Military Technical Institute of Protection, Bmo) and a member of the Czechoslovak Delegation to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. He is currently chairman of the OPCW Scientific Advisory Board. 

The author is a Principal Research Scientist in Australia s Defence Science and Technology Organisation, and a Principal Fellow/Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law, University of Melbourne. He was scientific adviser to the Australian delegation of the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva from 1984 until 1992, and since then has been scientific adviser to the Austrahan delegation of the OPCW in The Hague. The views expressed in this chapter are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Australian government. 

For example, the 1986 CWC Rolling Text stated The Consultative Committee shall. .. after the expiry of a period of... years from the date of entry into force of this Convention, undertake a review of the operation of this Convention in accordance with Article. .. , with the following footnote Some delegations were of the view that provisions on review should be more appropriately included in another part of the Convention. See Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Chemical Weapons to the Conference on Disarmament, CD/727, 21 August 1986, pp. 45-46. 

That the United States tends to think along these fines can be ascertained from the fact that, during the CWC negotiations at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, it strongly opposed the possibility that the Execntive Council or the Conference of the States Parties conld determine whether there had been a violation after the snbmission of the final report of the inspection team by the Director-General of the Technical Secretariat. As a resnlt, the CWC provides only that the Execntive Council shall review the final report and address any concerns as to whether any non-compliance has occnrred (Article IX, para. 22). 

During the CWC negotiations, the United States was one of the most vocal members of the Conference on Disarmament that advocated the kind of provisions that finally became paragraph 41, which is said to be the result of the US insistence. See Letter from Ivo Spalatin, Director of Congressional Affairs, US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, to Lee H. Hamilton, Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, US House of Representatives, 29 November 1994, pp. 2-3. 

Statement by Huang Yu, Director, External Relations, OPCW, answering my question at the United Nations Conference on Disarmament Issues in Osaka, 20 August 2003. 

Ibid. Chinese Delegation to the Conference on Disarmament, Some Information on Discovered Chemical Weapons Abandoned in China by a Foreign State , CD/1127 (CD/CW/WP.384) (15 February 1992). 

Though the Cold War was continuing, the political situation led to increased activities in international negotiations. At the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, some attempts to negotiate a ban of CWs was begun, first as the Ad hoc... 

BZ was stockpiled by the US military forces in 1980. However, in 1992, a US delegation to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva declared that their stocks of BZ were destroyed. It is not known if stocks of BZ are held by any other armed forces. The military use of BZ was limited to... 

The CTBT was hammered out in the Conference on Disarmament, a 61-member international forum, beginning in January 1994. In that committee, the US, Russia, the UK, France and China (members of the nuclear club ) and a number of the non-nuclear weapons states worked together. Negotiations were greatly aided by behind-the-scenes efforts from a number of states, especially Australia, as well as by the diplomatic skills of the committee chairs. 

At the last moment, the Conference on Disarmament failed to reach a consensus on the final text of the treaty, primarily due to opposition from India, which prevented the committee from forwarding the treaty to the UN. Belgium, along with 127 cosponsors, kept the treaty alive by introducing the text to the UN General Assembly as a resolution, a process that had never before been attempted. Discussion in the UN was brief, and on 10 September 1996 the General Assembly voted 158 to 3 in support of the treaty (Sullivan, 1998). 

Under Article XIV (Entry into force), the Treaty will enter into force 180 days after the 44 States listed in annex 2 to the Treaty have deposited their instruments of ratification with the Secretary-General of the United Nations, but in no case earlier than two years after its opening for signature . This list comprises the States that formally participated in the 1996 session of the conference on Disarmament, and that appear in Table 1 of the December 1995 edition of Nuclear Research Reactors in the World and Table 1 of the April 1996 edition of Nuclear Power Reactors in the World , both compiled by the International Atomic Energy Agency. 

Conference on Disarmament on 6 August 1992, the 22 members of the Australia Group only partially addressed this point. They merely undertook to... 

If evidence is uncovered by investigations or by inspection teams of treaty violations, and if the state concerned fails to meet the requests for compliance by the Executive Council, then support for the Convention will be put to the test. Even Thomas Bernauer, a staunch supporter of the CWC, conceded that the assistance and sanction provisions of the Convention are rather weak . By leaving the Convention without any automatic and mandatory recourse to sanctions and/or assistance, and by leaving the UN Security Council with responsibility for coping with major treaty violations, the Conference on Disarmament simply reflected international realities. Yet the great powers have repeatedly failed to act decisively over outbreaks of chemical warfare (other than occasionally to assist the victim by sending protective equipment, though often in quite inadequate amounts), and their failures have frequently fuelled... 

Speech by Mr Tim Renton, MP, Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the Conference on Disarmament (15 July 1986) Parliamentary] Deb[ates], vol.145 (18 January 1989), col.196. 

Trainor, The Gulf War Some Lessons from 8 Years , p.l7 P. Morel, How to Prevent the Proliferation of Chemical Weapons the Political Aspects , Disarmament (Kyoto, Japan United Nations Conference on Disarmament Issues Proceedings, 19-22 April 1989), p.43. 

Letter dated 11 April 1988 from the Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran addressed to the President of the Conference on Disarmament, CD/827 (12 April 1988), p.2. See also Burck and Floweree, International Handbook, pp.96-7. 

Ledogar in Conference on Disarmament, CD/PV.627 (23 July 1992), p.8. F.J. Gaffney, Chemical Accord Falls Short Weapon Inspection Regime Offers Broad Loopholes , Defense News, vol.7, part 30 (27 July-2 August 1992), p.l3, and Chemical Warfare Beware Bush s Perilous Delusions , p.A22 Charen, Wishful Chemical Thinking , p.G4. 

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