28th February, 2001
Dr. Henry: In view of the Minister of State's problems in the biological and bacteriological areas at the moment I thank him for dealing with this issue, which is in the same area.
According to a report by Lara Marlowe in The Irish Times of Saturday, 24 February this year, the Minister of Foreign Affairs said in Paris that Iraq must comply with UN Security Council Resolution 1284, which demands the destruction of all chemical and biological weapons before sanctions against that country can be lifted. The State of Iraq has certainly used chemical weapons against its own citizens and possibly biological weapons too. However, Iraq is not the only country which holds chemical weapons or to engage in research in this area. Many other countries do so as well. Ours may be the only State on the Security Council which does not have such weapons or which has not had them in the recent past. It is extraordinarily important we take this fact on board. As well as states having bacteriological weapons, unfortunately terrorist groups such as the Aum Shinri Kyo have such weapons as well.
Biological weapons have been used sporadically throughout time. In the last century the use of anthrax to kill either humans or animals was known. In contrast to the fabrication of nuclear weapons the production of biological weapons requires only a small quantity of equipment but 100 kg of anthrax spores dropped over a city from an unmanned plane could kill 1 million to 3 million people in a night. Massive casualties can be caused by small amounts of a bacteriological agent. With the advent of genetic engineering, bacteria which are now controllable by modern medical methods can be changed by gene splicing so that they are resistant to the antibiotic or other agent with which they were once eradicated.
We know Iraq has anthrax, which was, astonishingly, given to them by George Bush senior when he was President of America, though relations between Iraq and America were different then. They also have botulism toxin which causes paralysis, clostridium perfringens, which causes gas gangrene and perhaps other modified bacteria. We know approximately 20 other countries have much the same, so concentrating on Iraq will not solve the world situation.
Not only humans and animals may be targeted. During the Vietnam war the American military used herbicides for defoliation and crop destruction. Defoliation was the process of using herbicides to mimic certain hormones which cause leaf fall. Crop destruction was the process of using herbicides to destroy food sources. The primary effect of this programme was to deny local food supply to enemy manpower and to oblige them to use their time transporting food. However, it also denied the civilian population their food and frequently meant they had to move to the cities where they were more easily controlled. Agent Orange, as it was called, caused huge damage to the environment of Vietnam. Half the tropical forests were destroyed and the water there seriously polluted. The military gain was questionable, especially in view of the fact that many American soldiers were affected by Agent Orange from aerial spraying and by occupying the contaminated area. Eventually the US Government admitted that service personnel who had been exposed to Agent Orange had a higher rate of soft tissue sarcoma, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, Hodgkins disease and skin conditions such as chloroacne and porphyria cutanea tarda. Multiple myelona, cancers of the lung, larynx and trachea were also more common. Soviet planes dropped a mycotoxin in south-east Asia and Afghanistan in 1979. Mycotoxins are produced by fungi and have an effect on higher organisms. They are very stable and can be stored for years at room temperature.
The then Director of the CIA, George J. Tenet, testified before the US Senate Committee on Intelligence on 2 February 2000 and said that the proliferaters of biological weapons are showing "greater proficiency in the use of denial and deception." He said that approximately a dozen countries had biological weapons and some terrorist organisations also had them. Some countries see them as a means of overcoming the overwhelming conventional military superiority of states such as the United States. Biological weapons programmes are becoming more sophisticated and slow and fast acting agents are being mixed.
8 o'clock
Biological weapons have been controlled for many years by the signatories to the Biological Weapons Convention, 1975. They are required to submit to the UN information on facilities where biological defence research is being conducted, scientific conferences that are held at specific facilities, exchanges of scientists and information and disease outbreaks. Some countries plead their bacteria and toxins are for defensive reasons, but the interpretation of "defensive" is a problem.
The Security Council reserves the right to veto any request for an investigation should allegations of infraction be lodged with the United Nations. To stop the proliferation and use of biological weapons we should now use our increased profile on the Security Council to have a verification protocol added to the convention. Without verification, the whole process is useless. Given that we have such a problem with foot and mouth disease, imagine if this was introduced as a biological weapon.
Our seat on the Security Council of the UN gives us additional authority and responsibility. The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, 1975, has been signed by 140 countries. It is reviewed on a five yearly basis and is up for such re-examination this autumn. It is essential that a verification protocol is added to the convention at this review.
The convention prohibits the development, production, stockpiling or acquisition of biological weapons but has no effective means of verification. Offensive biological weapons programmes are, therefore, left unregulated by international arms control agreements at precisely the time when there is a revolution in modern biotechnology.
My colleague, Professor Vivienne Nathanson of the British Medical Association Science Division, has been one of those insisting that doctors make known our ethical objections to such weapons of mass destruction. Superfluous injury and unnecessary suffering can be caused to huge members of civilians by these weapons, with little military advantage. Weapons could even be developed which target particular racial or ethnic groups, for example, those with black skin. These weapons must go and we must do our utmost to prevent the escalation in biological weapons.
Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development (Mr. Davern): I apologise that my colleague, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Cowen, cannot be here as he is in America. I thank the Senator for raising this very timely issue.
The motion which we are debating this evening provides a timely opportunity, which I welcome, to set out the policy and approach of the Government in regard of the most important matter of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention and the current actions which are in train to secure a verification protocol to this convention. The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention prohibits the development, production and stockpiling of bacteriological and toxin weapons and provides for their destruction. The convention, therefore, is designed to ensure a total ban on these weapons. The convention was negotiated in Geneva by the United Nations Conference on Disarmament and was concluded in 1972. When the requisite number of states had signed and ratified the convention, it entered into force in 1975.
Unfortunately at the time of negotiation of the convention, no verification measures were included in the text. It, therefore, did not have any means of enforcing its provisions. Ireland signed and ratified the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention shortly after it was concluded in 1972. It is axiomatic in the disarmament field that an arms or weapons control measure is only as strong as its verification and compliance criteria. This is a view which has always been held by the Irish Government. To remedy this deficit with regard to compliance and verification, a special conference of states parties to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convection - BTWC - decided in September 1994 to establish an ad hoc group to address the issue of a verification protocol. The objective of this regime was to mirror in its provisions and, to the extent relevant, the appropriate verification provisions of the Chemical Weapons Convention, which entered into force in 1996. Ireland immediately joined in this work and continues to maintain a high level of engagement and input through its membership of the ad hoc group.
I will now briefly describe the progress of the work of this group since its inception in 1994.
The Fourth Review Conference of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention took place in 1996 and it examined the results achieved at that time by the ad hoc group. It welcomed the determination of the ad hoc group to intensify its work with a view to bringing it to completion as early as possible, ideally before the fifth review conference.
The fifth review conference is scheduled to take place in December of this year. The projected intensification of work did indeed take place and by the end of the year 2000 the ad hoc group had met for more than 50 weeks of intense negotiations. The ad hoc group has again started work this year. It is expected to maintain a good pace of work with a view to meeting the deadline for concluding a protocol by the end of this year. While it is the hope of Ireland and indeed of our European Union partners that the end of 2001 will see the completion of the work on the verification protocol, the subject matter, as has become clear in the course of negotiations, is both large and highly complex and the outstanding challenges must not be underestimated. Accordingly, I cannot underestimate the challenges to the completion of these negotiations.
I am sure the Seanad will agree on the importance of concluding a strong and effective verification protocol to provide the necessary guarantees that biological weapons are not being produced. Nonetheless, together with her EU partners, Ireland believes that the review conference next December represents an important deadline for the conclusion of a substantive protocol, which will make a real contribution to strengthening the convention. The European Union has made representations to this effect to the chairman of the ad hoc group, Ambassador Toth, encouraging him to work within this framework and timeframe.
It is evident that, like any other major multilateral instrument, the protocol is being negotiated in a complex international environment in which many diverse external factors impinge upon the negotiations. The lack of clear negotiating positions by some delegations involved in the negotiations might have a bearing on the firmness of their commitment to the 2001 deadline. Should that be the case, hard choices will have to be made by the chairman of the ad hoc group as to whether to let the deadline slip or to proceed with the conclusion of this important instrument by the end of 2001. The Government will continue to work with like-minded countries, particularly our EU partners, to force the pace of negotiations so that the protocol will be ready in time for the review conference.
The six years, which have been spent negotiating this important instrument have borne fruit to the extent that there is now substantial agreement on a number of major elements of this protocol. Pending the conclusion of this instrument, I am pleased to have this opportunity to inform the House that Ireland has for some time been working to implement in a practical way the terms of the convention. By this I mean in particular that we are working actively to prevent any unwitting contribution by Irish companies to the supply of products, equipment, components or sub-components, which could contribute to the development of chemical or biological weapons capacity. As a further measure we co-operate in this work with like-minded countries and in particular in the multilateral forum provided by the Australia group. This is an informal grouping of states, which have chosen to voluntarily share standards and information in the field of biological and chemical weapons with the aim of controlling flows of chemicals and other agents, which could be used to create such weapons.
The addition of a verification mechanism to the biological weapons convention will provide greater confidence in the implementation of the provisions of the convention. This is all the more important as biological research and development and the biological sciences in general have become more widespread in the period since the convention was concluded in 1972.
I assure the House of the attention that the Government is giving and will continue to give to this issue. It is the intention of the Government to keep the House informed of major developments. It would be my hope that, following the agreement of the protocol by the end of this year, we would be in a position to lay the text of the agreed protocol before the House at an early date in 2002.
Dr. Henry: I thank the Minister for his response. The biological disaster of foot and mouth disease which is around us at the moment makes us realise even more how potent biological weapons are and how important it is for us to use our place on the Security Council to fight against this serious threat.
The Seanad adjourned at 8.10 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, 1 March 2001.
