Multilateral negotiations

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... 

Multilateral negotiations on a ban on chemical weapons were first attempted in the 1960s, when chemical and biological weapons were... 

Committee on Foreign Relations, Status of 1990 Bilateral Chemical Weapons Agreement and Multilateral Negotiation on Chemical Weapons Ban, 102nd Congress, first session, 22 May 1991. 

Noting the bilateral and other discussions, including the ongoing exchange of views between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and United States of America in the framework of the multilateral negotiations, on issues related to the prohibition of chemical weapons. 

Iran has asserted its rights under Article IV to develop enrichment technology for peaceful purposes, a position not palatable to those weapons states (notably the USA) that see the potential for weapons production. Iran s position depends on its persuading people that it is fiilfilling its obligations under Article II. It has not been entirely successful on this front, largely because of its evasive accounts of earlier history. Meanwhile, North Korea alternates positions over peaceful versus military use, and between multilateral negotiations and unilateral withdrawal. 

The Conference on Disarmament is the current name of the multilateral negotiating body which has been variously known as the Ten Nation Committee on Disarmament (TNCD), the Eighteen Nation Committee on Disarmament (ENDC), the Conference of the Committee on Disarmament (CCD), and the Committee on Disarmament (CD). In the following text, the CD is referred to by the name which was current during the period under discussion. 

Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, Legal Texts, Uruguay Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations, World Trade Organization, Geneva, Switzerland, 1995. 

World Trade Organisation (2000a) Agreement on the application of sanitary and phytosanitary measures, in The Legal Texts—The Results of the Uruguay Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations. Cambridge University Press, pp. 59-120. 

European Union s civil service, and comprises approximately 14,000 officials, has the right of initiative, that is, to draw up proposals for Union legislation. The Commission negotiates on behalf of the member states in multilateral and bilateral trade matters and in the drawing up of association and membership agreements with nonmember countries. 

At the conclusion of the negotiation of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) in 1992, this treaty was heralded as a major breakthrough in multilateral arms control. It was the first comprehensively verifiable multilateral treaty that completely banned an entire class of weapons, and went further than any previous treaty in the depth, extent and intrusiveness of its verification. Verification under the CWC includes compulsory national declarations about relevant industrial and military activities, destruction of chemical weapons within a time frame with intrusive verification, and a regime of routine inspections of declared industrial and military facilities. Additional features are the possibility of a challenge inspection, whereby a State Party can request an inspection of any site in another State Party at short notice, and provisions for the investigation of alleged use of chemical weapons. 

By the time of the development of the CWC RevCon provisions in the late 1980s, the convening of Review Conferences of other multilateral arms control treaties at approximately five-yearly intervals had become an estabhshed norm, in particular for the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the BWC. The CWC negotiators readily agreed that CWC RevCons should be held no later than one year after the expiry of the fifth and the tenth year after entry into force of this Convention . Although the actual procedures to initiate RevCons under the CWC dif-... 

Evidence of this mechanism could be observed in negotiations over the Phase 1 National Allocation Plans (NAP) in the EU ETS on the basis of a pre-announced formula, the EU Commission successfully rejected several national allocation plans in which countries had endowed themselves with generous allocations (Zapfel, 2007). As pointed out by Ellerman et al. (2007, p.350), the possibility of blaming the EU Commission as an institution representing some greater good sometimes helped to justify the adoption of unpopular decisions vis-a-vis the domestic constituency. In this sense, the multilateral architecture of the EU ETS helped to uphold the environmental ambition of the system. 

Ambassador Stephen J. Ledogar The End of the Negotiations , p.lO S.M. Keeny, Jr., Paying for a Chemical-Weapons Free World , ACT, vol.22, part 8 (October 1992), p.2 Bailey, Problems with a Chemical Weapons Ban , pp.244-6 J.H. Grotte, S.D. Leibbrandt and D.P. Schultz, Inspection Costs for a Multilateral Chemical Weapons Convention. An Analytical Framework and Preliminary Estimates, IDA Paper P-2383 (Alexandria, Virginia Institute for Defense Analyses, 1990), pp.ES-3, III-26-III-31. 

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