Soviet Union Convention, disarmament

A draft convention was submitted by the UK in 1969 to the Conference of the Committee on Disarmament and this gained support from first the USA and then from the Soviet Union. It is, however, evident that its content was considerably diluted in a bilateral negotiations between the USA and the Soviet Union who, consciously or unconsciously, gutted the draft treaty of some of its more important components (Sims, 2001). Nevertheless, this led to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) which opened for signature on 10 April 1972 and entered into force three years later on 26 March 1975. 

The mode of inspection has been vigorously debated. On 21 July 1982, the Soviet Union presented its Basic Provisions on a CW Convention before the Committee on Disarmament. It proposed an agreed number of regular visits on a quota basis as distinct from the continuous monitoring favoured by the United States. Only on 2 April 1984 did the Soviet Union accept that the destruction of certain types of chemical weapons would have to be monitored by the continuous presence of inspection teams." Indeed, systematic international on-site inspection, involving a routine presence without any element of suspicion, should build confidence in the regime established by the convention. The number of inspectors could be reduced by the on-site emplacement of chemical and physical instruments. 

In March the Soviet Union formally admitted for the first time since 1945 to the possession of chemical weapons (see chapter 6). A few weeks later Mr Gorbachev not only stressed the importance of a chemical weapons ban, but went on to claim that the Soviet Union had ceased chemical weapons production, and to deny that other Warsaw Pact countries had either produced or stockpiled chemical weapons. He also announced that the Soviet Union had begun to build a special plant for the destruction of chemical weapons to enable us rapidly to implement the process of chemical disarmament once an international convention is concluded . )... 

---