States Parties requirements under

States Parties contributions under subparagraph 7(a) of Article X remains limited, and stands at EUR 1.3 million, well short of what would be required to fimd any large-scale operation. The workshop was informed about the exercises conducted in Croatia (in 2002) and in Ukraine (in 2005), and about the efforts to improve cooperation and coordination with other relevant international organisations. 

In this context, the Convention requires that States Parties cooperate with the OPCW in facilitating the coordination and delivery of assistance and protection to minimise the consequences of a chemical weapons attack, in countering the threat of use of chemical weapons, and in eliminating the threats posed by activities prohibited under Article I of the Convention. Article X stipulates that each State Party has the right to request and to receive assistance and protection against the use or threat of use of chemical weapons. 

Determining whether or not a particular event reported by a state under the regulations constitutes a public health emergency of international concern, with advice from external experts if required Developing and recommending the critical health measures for implementation by states/parties... 

The presence of the only one and removable hard disk was requested by decision of Conference of the State Parties on its first session (3). In Attachment 6 of the decision 71 concerning specific operational requirements for GC/MS system, it says that all data in nonvolatile memory must be retainable at the inspected site under joint custody of the Technical Secretariat (TS) and the inspected State Party. The hard disk with all raw data may be considered as containing highly protected information and requested to be left on site of inspection. 

The OPCW is thus the implementing body of the Convention. The two bodies vested with the responsibility for making decisions on policy matters and disputes over interpretation or implementation are the Executive Council and the Conference of States Parties. The Executive Council, comprising representatives of 41 member states elected for two-year terms, meets four five times per year. The Conference of States Parties includes all CWC states, meets annually (or more often if required), and oversees the implementation of the Convention. The day-to-day administration and implementation, including inspections, is the responsibihty of the Technical Secretariat under the leadership of a Director-General appointed by the Conference of States Parties on the recommendation of the Executive Council. All three principal organs of the OPCW are... 

States Parties are required to designate or establish a National Authority to ensure the effective implementation of the CWC. The National Authority makes the initial and subsequent annual declaration on chemical weapon stocks or facilities, coordinates and participates in the receipt of OPCW inspections of industrial and military sites, participates in assisting and protecting member states under threat or actual chemical attack, and promotes the peaceful use of chemicals. The National Authority is thus the focal point in a country s interaction with other countries and the OPCW. The Technical Secretariat of the OPCW helps in the provision of advice, assistance and capacity development of relevant skills and expertise in the staff of national authorities. The secretariat also hosts and coordinates regular meetings of the national authorities from all over the world. 

It is noteworthy that the assistance and protection provisions in Article X provide for a variety of mechanisms to deal with possible future CW threats, no matter how they might come about. The CWC not only establishes the right of States Parties to protect themselves against chemical weapons but calls for enhanced cooperation between the parties in the area of exchanging equipment, material and information needed for protective purposes and requires the Organisation as a whole to help States Parties improve their protective capacity and to provide assistance to those States Parties that are not in a position to acquire protection for themselves, by the coordination and delivery of such protection under procedures of the Organisation. ... 

A third area of implementation of the CWC is the apphcation of the provisions to prevent CW prohferation. These provisions are contained in the general undertakings of the States Parties (Article I) in conjunction with the apphcable definitions (Article II), the requirement for States Parties to take the measures necessary for them to fully implement all the provisions of the Convention and to render each other legal assistance (Article VII), and the provisions on declarations, inspections and transfer prohibitions under Article VI. 

In particular, the requirement under Article I to destroy all chemical weapons would make such weapons less accessible to terrorist groups. The requirements of Article VII to criminalize the prohibitions of the CWC and enact effective penal legislation would reduce the possibility that a CWC State Party could inadvertently become a safe haven for those who use chemical weapons as a tool of terror, and would hence help reduce the threat posed by chemical terrorism. Likewise, the transfer (export control and monitoring) obligations under Article VI would serve to reduce the risk of diversion of toxic chemicals (either weaponized chemical weapons, precursors of military chemical agents, including those listed in the CWC Schedules, or other toxic chemicals) for terrorist uses. 

In cases where the facilities or areas sought to be inspected are located on the territory of a State Party, but in a place under the jurisdiction or control of a State not Party to this Convention, the State Party shall take all necessary measures as would be required of an inspected State Party and a Host State Party to ensure that inspections of such facilities or areas can be carried out in accordance with the provisions of this Annex. If the State Party is unable to ensure access to those facilities or areas, it shall demonstrate that it took all necessary measures to ensure access. This paragraph shall not apply where the facilities or areas sought to be inspected are those of the State Party. 

Both States Parties - quite properly - focused on the chemicals and facilities regulated by the Convention. This very focus, however, raises the issue of whether the first element of the States Parties Article VI, paragraph 2, obligation is met. This requires States Parties to adopt the necessary measures to ensure that all toxic chemicals and their precursors are involved only in activities for purposes not prohibited under the Convention. Thus, Article VI requires a State Party to go further in its regulation of toxic chemicals than covering only the chemicals that come within the verification purview of the CWC. ... 

The CWC furthermore requires States Parties to take measures to ensure that activities relating to toxic chemicals are conducted only for purposes not prohibited under the CWC. In part, this obhgation is met by the regulation of Scheduled chemicals and related facilities and of OCPFs. With regard to other toxic chemicals, however, a State Party may find that this provision requires it to enact provisions indicating the purposes for which activities involving toxic chemicals are permitted and/ or regulating toxic chemicals outside of those covered by the verification mechanisms of the CWC. 

The provisions of the CWC itself, as with other aspects of the OPCW s work and mandate, provide the framework within which any elaboration of its universality must proceed. Although the word universality does not appear explicitly in the text, the first, sixth and final preambles to the CWC nevertheless make reference to progress towards general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control , to exclude completely the possibihty of the use of chemical weapons , and the complete and effective prohibition of. .. chemical weapons . Clearly, none of these aims can be fuUy realized without adherence by all states and fulfilment of the requirements to implement the CWC in and across all jurisdictions. This has been consistently recognized in decisions of successive sessions of the Conference of the States Parties to the CWC and through the development of a plan of action, which is inspired by the objective of achieving universal adherence to the Convention ten years after its entry into force (i.e. by 2007). 

Security Council Resolution 1540, adopted on 28 April 2004, confirms the connection with the OPCW s work. This has also been firmly established in the consultations of the States Parties, between the OPCW s Action Plan on Article VII of the Convention and Resolution 1540. Under the mandatory Security Council resolution, adopted under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, all UN members are required ... 

Article III (National implementation measures) requires each State party to take any necessary measures to implement its obligations under the Treaty, including the establishment of a National authority for liaison with the Organization and other State Parties. 

It is thus evident that the use of riot control agents for law enforcement, including domestic riot control purposes, is not prohibited under the Convention. The CWC requires under Article III Declarations that each State Party shall submit to the Organization, not later than 30 days after the Convention enters into force for the State Party, the following declaration ... 

The Scheduled Chemicals are primarily chemicals which have been used at some time or have been considered for use at some time as chemical weapons. Particular attention is given in the CWC to the verification of such chemicals. However, the designation of some chemicals in the Schedules is merely an aid to the verification of the Convention. It has to be underlined that the prohibitions in the Convention apply to all toxic chemicals as defined in Article II of the Convention and that each State Party is required to adopt the necessary measures to ensure that toxic chemicals and their precursors are only developed, produced, otherwise acquired, retained, transferred, or used... forpurposes not prohibited under this Convention. Consequently the prohibitions are all embracing and the national measures to ensure that toxic chemicals are only used for purposes not prohibited under the Convention are equally all embracing. Chemical weapons are truly totally prohibited. 

It has to be emphasized, however, that these three Schedules are neither intended to serve as an alternative definition of a chemical weapon under the CWC, nor are the lists set in concrete. Rather, these lists are used for declarations by states parties and verification activities of the OPCW with respect to routine inspections and as such do not circumscribe the scope of the Convention. It follows from this that any chemical, whether listed under a Schedule or not, has to be considered a chemical weapon if it has been produced, stored or used for that purpose. 59 If required, Schedules can be updated more easily than the text of the Convention itself, in order to reflect changes in the S T environment.60... 

Article I of the CWC obliges states parties to destroy any chemical weapon stockpiles in its possession or which it has abandoned on the territory of another state party. As well, a state party must destroy its chemical weapons production facilities (CWPFs) or convert them for peaceful purposes not prohibited under the Convention. A state party is required within 30 days of ratifying or acceding to the Convention to declare to the Technical Secretariat whether or not it possesses any chemical weapons or has possessed or produced them in the past. Likewise, old chemical weapons (OCW), both those produced before 1925, and those produced between 1925 and 1946, have to be declared. A state party must also notify the OPCW if it has... 

However, it is questionable whether these new concerns have been translated into an overall strengthening of the BW prohibition regime. On the multilateral level the Inter-Review Conference process has focused on a small number of selected issue areas in which a substantial amount of information has been produced by BWC states parties. However, to the extent that much of this information is related to domestic implementation of BWC provisions, these activities follow from BWC Article IV on national implementation. Yet, this stipulation of the BWC should have been followed by states parties three decades ago. So, at best the current exercise represents an attempt to catch up with BWC implementation as it is required under the Convention and as such could be providing a foundation on which to build future efforts to deal with the changing BW threat. 

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has promulgated regulations under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to protect from disclosure to third-parties confidential business information (CBI) submitted to the Agency. The statutory provision requiring EPA to create protections for CBI is TSCA 14. TSCA 14 defines the nature of the CBI that should be maintained in confidence by reference to the Freedom of Information Act, which in turn protects information from disclosure if it consists of trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person and privileged or confidential. Examples of information considered CBI under TSCA include chemical formulas, material inputs identification, process information, chemical substance identities, company names, site locations, and volumes of substances manufactured, imported, or processed. The EPA may make pubHc any information claimed as CBI in health and safety studies on substances or mixtures that have been offered for commercial sale or for which testing is required under 4 or for which notification is required under 5. However, EPA cannot disclose process information or information about the proportion of chemical substances in a mixture. ... 

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