test_pdf.pdf

ASSESSING
THE RECORD
OF ARMS
CONTROL
There’s a separate question about this concerning arms control. All the selling and the complacency being
involved in arms control business, it is sort of bureaucratic inertia of each agency or the keeper of the treaties. To sell,
this is a very powerful tool. We can’t do everything to prevent proliferation. That’s almost human nature to do so. By
doing so, in a way, you give, implant a sort of, a sense of complacency among the people and make people come to
think, okay, the biological weapons are taken care of, chemical weapons are taken care of, but it’s not true, as Avis
said. They can be only useful as a part of the set of measures, national means of verification, plus those international
obligations. One day I asked Richard Butler, the last chairman of UNSCOM [UN Special Commission]. He told me,
no, don’t put all the responsibility on verification. You can’t do everything with it. It’s only useful as a set of, first,
political commitments of the countries not to have those weapons, and second, international legal obligations not to
have them. Verification regimes can do a useful work to verify non-possession or nonproliferation. So I think that’s
the problem.
Then this question of internationalization—I think it’s one very interesting proposal by Mr. ElBaradei. There
are two big questions to implement it. One question is there are already countries with vast fuel cycle industries like
Japan, Germany, Belgium, and Canada—it would be very difficult to persuade those countries to submit the existing
facilities. It’s a billion-dollar industry for those countries. How do you do it? But if you allow them to keep them and
if you say we just want to prevent the new ones to do so, countries like Iran will immediately say, this is discrimination,
and how can you multilaterally agree on such a measure. That’s a big challenge but I think we need to explore
this possibility.
MR. STEINBRUNER: This will be the last question, and the panel can respond to what he is about to say and
to the others, but we have just a few minutes left.
Q: Thank you, it’s a great honor to be among the last. Vladimir Rybachenkov, Russian Embassy, senior
counselor for political and military affairs. I have a question to Ms. Harris. I’ve heard you mentioning Russia among
your proliferation concerns inside Chemical Weapons Convention. Well, it’s rather strange for me to hear it, taking
into account that Russia as well as the United States, is a founding member of the convention and there we do have
a rather developed partnership in this field together with the United States. But nevertheless I would like to ask you,
do you have some specific concerns that could be presented to the organization of the Chemical Weapons Convention?
We did have a lot of inspections and no concerns registered, and do you have any specific concerns that could
be presented at that organization or are they just some theoretical concerns that, well, for example, Russia also has
about chemical weapons and the United States? I do understand that we have a free conference and it’s proper
forum to discuss these issues, it’s not a formal talks among government so we must discuss these concerns here.
Thank you.
MS. HARRIS: I don’t think it’s a secret that there have been concerns since even before entry into force of the
CWC about Russian declarations under the Wyoming MOU, the bilateral data exchange that the U.S. and Russia
had. And those concerns have revolved around three issues. The first is the size of the stockpile that has been
declared. Russia has declared a stockpile of 40,000 metric tons of chemical agents. There are questions, at least
within the U.S. government, as to whether that is in fact the total size of the stockpile that Russia inherited from the
former Soviet Union. Secondly, there have been questions about the composition of the stockpile and in particular
about the work on “novichoks” under the former Soviet Union—agents that are based on chemicals not on the CWC
schedules. Russia has acknowledged that such weapons were researched under the former Soviet Union but has
not acknowledged that those “novichoks” form part of the existing stockpile. This is a question about which there
are concerns in the U.S. Finally, there have been concerns about whether or not all of the facilities that were part of
the Soviet chemical weapons program have been declared as required under the treaty. It has been a while since I
saw the details on all of this but I think Russia declared only a very limited number of development facilities for a
stockpile of tens of thousands of tons of a variety of agents and munitions types. So there are outstanding concerns
about whether the facility declarations have also been fully accurate.
I just want to react to two things that Avis said. First, just to keep the record straight, on the issue of the protocol,
I think a comprehensive approach is preferable, would have been preferable, and did not share the view of the Bush
administration with respect to the protocol under negotiation. Declaration and inspection provisions are mutually
reinforcing, and if we could get both, I think that that would be very valuable to the BWC. What I was trying to say
in my comments on the protocol is that, at least for the foreseeable future, I don’t think this sort of comprehensive
approach is politically feasible and therefore I think we need to break apart the problem and focus on the most
urgent pieces, I would start with creating a capacity to pursue concerns about suspect facilities.
Secondly, on the issue of context, I was trying to make a similar point and in fact, looking for a quote from
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