Did U.S. violate bioweapons treaty with secret projects?

By Charles J. Hanley
Associated Press
18 August 2003

GENEVA, Switzerland (AP) - A new germ, an innovative bomb, a "terrorist" bioweapons factory: Some say secretive U.S. work on such projects violated the treaty banning biological arms.

The concealment of the research, in particular, "has shaken the confidence of governments about the validity of the whole treaty process," said Jean Pascal Zanders, Belgian head of a new unofficial watchdog group seeking to monitor compliance with the 1975 Biological Weapons Convention.

The U.S. government maintains these three projects were developed to study defenses against germ weapons:

• The CIA built and tested a model of what was said to be a Soviet-designed "cluster" bomblet that could deliver harmful biological agents.
• The Pentagon built a sophisticated bioweapons plant from commercially available materials, to test, it said, whether terrorists could do the same without detection.
• The Pentagon planned, but may not have carried out, the genetic engineering of a new, more potent variant of anthrax bacteria thought to be resistant to U.S. vaccine.

The projects were first disclosed by The New York Times on Sept. 4, 2001. Earlier that summer, the U.S. government began its campaign to end multilateral negotiations on a bioweapons treaty organization to conduct inspections and verify compliance.

Among other objections, Bush administration officials said inspections might enable enemies to learn about U.S. biodefense methods and try to counter them.

Other governments, including the British and other Europeans, don't accept this argument. British negotiators said London, too, does biodefense work, but doesn't have these concerns.

The treaty doesn't define acceptable "defensive" work that might involve actual bioweapons, such as the cluster munitions.

"Many people think the work on the biological cluster bomblets clearly was a violation of the strict prohibition against weaponization," said former Iraq arms inspector Jonathan Tucker, a U.S. Institute of Peace scholar in Washington.

American officials argue the bioweapons pact is an "intent treaty," violated only if the intent is to make arms for offensive use.

Critics also say Washington broke a commitment by omitting these projects from its annual treaty disclosures. Although not legally required under the treaty, the reports are politically mandated under decisions taken by member nations at treaty conferences.

Charles J. Hanley is AP Special Correspondent. He has reported on arms control issues for 20 years.