THE FUTURE OF BIOLOGICAL DISARMAMENT

Abstract

The Sixth Review Conference of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) gave the future of biological disarmament new hope. It brought the BWC back closer to the core of multilateral efforts to combat the weaponization of disease, agreed to an intersessional work program for 2007–2010, created an implementation support unit, and revived the interrupted process of BWC evolution through extended understandings agreed at review conferences. However, its aims were deliberately modest. Having set their sights realistically low, delegations did not have to lower them much further. What was most important was to prevent U.S.-Iranian acrimony from paralyzing the conference. With deadlock once again narrowly averted, the conference had to clear away the debris left from past dissensions in order to open the way to constructive evolution for the treaty. In particular the conference avoided contentious subjects such as permanent organization and verification measures for the BWC; its institutional deficit and compliance problems remain. Successes and limitations of the conference are analyzed, as is its equivocal outcome on confidence-building measures. Developing on the endogenous principle, the BWC will continue to need constant attention. At the center of a complex edifice, the BWC must be kept sound, strong, and solid.

Keywords:

• Biological Weapons Convention
• Review conference
• Biological disarmament

The future of biological disarmament is not limited to the fate of one treaty. Increasingly, it has come to be accepted that the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) is only one element in a “web of prevention” and that other instruments, national and international, have their own part to play in ensuring a world free from the deliberate infliction of death and suffering through disease.1 The BWC addresses the particular threat of the weaponization of disease and bans a range of activities directly relevant to that threat.

For counterterrorism and counterproliferation purposes, indeed, the BWC is not an ideal instrument because its rationale is embedded in the quite different conceptual framework of disarmament, to which also belongs its diplomatic history. It makes sense in disarmament terms. It is the disarmament treaty banning biological weapons. Unfortunately that is enough, for some, to relegate it to the margins of interest.

Yet some policymakers and commentators have been too quick to dismiss it as an anachronism, left over from the Cold War and no longer relevant in the 21st century. On the contrary, its relevance is undiminished by the passage of time; its character as a disarmament treaty endows it with qualities of simplicity and comprehensiveness that, properly understood, are sources of strength not weakness; and its Sixth Review Conference, recently completed in Geneva, has given it a much needed boost, as its states parties have found a long-elusive unity of purpose (or at any rate have gotten much nearer to a common mind). They have taken a thorough look at their treaty, deliberated on how to make practical use of it, and concluded with a program of modest dimensions and manageable aims to take it forward for the next five years.

The BWC is being strengthened in unspectacular and therefore uncontentious ways that ask little of governments. It remains essentially undemanding, with its procedures underdeveloped. Yet it is at last moving in the right direction, after years of being pulled this way and that by dissentient forces. As the conference president, Amb. Masood Khan of Pakistan, put it in celebrating the “historic moment“ of completing the successful review, the delegates had been stalked by the shadow of the past but were nimble enough to stay ahead of it and “quickly moved into the brighter lights of the future.”2

And the BWC is moving in the right direction, be it noted, not by amendment of its provisions or supplementation by such means as adding a legally binding protocol, but politically and endogenously, by a steady process of internal evolution alone. This process involves governments recording agreement on politically binding commitments and extended understandings of the implications of each article, drawing out the latent potential of the treaty as it stands. It is evolution, not revolution: a constructive evolution on which governments can once more converge and a process those governments can once again make their own.

In 2006, after a gap of 10 years, the BWC governments conducted a thorough review of every article and agreed the first Final Declaration since 1996 to express their common vision. In doing so they reaffirmed individually all the most enduringly significant of the politically binding commitments and extended understandings that previous review conferences had accumulated between 1980 and 1996, and they added a few more of their own.

Much of this article assesses the significance of the BWC Sixth Review Conference and its implications for the place of the BWC in the future regime of biological disarmament. But first a brief description and history of this treaty is required.

Background

The Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction, commonly known as the BWC or BTWC, was negotiated at Geneva and concluded on September 28, 1971, then commended by the UN General Assembly in New York on December 16, 1971, and opened for signature in London, Moscow, and Washington on April 10, 1972.3 When it entered into force on March 26, 1975, it had 46 original parties. As of 2007, the number of states parties is 155. There are also 16 signatory-only states and 24 outside altogether. The BWC's Depositaries are the governments of the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Russian Federation (until 1991, the Soviet Union). There is no treaty organization.

The BWC was the first multilateral disarmament treaty banning an entire category of weapons. It complemented the existing ban on their use in war, which by 1971 was binding on many states as a treaty obligation through their ratification of, or accession to, the Geneva Protocol of June 17, 1925 (and, it was sometimes asserted, was binding on all states regardless of treaty status through the evolution of the related international legal norm), by subjecting a further nine activities to prohibition.4 These nine activities were development, production, stockpiling, acquisition, and retention (under Article I) and transfer, assistance, encouragement, and inducement (under Article III).

The BWC's structure of obligations may be summarized thus:

Article I. Never in any circumstances to develop, produce, stockpile or otherwise acquire or retain (a) microbial or other biological agents, or toxins whatever their origin or method of production, of types and in quantities that have no justification for prophylactic, protective, or other peaceful purposes; (b) weapons, equipment, or means of delivery designed to use such agents or toxins for hostile purposes or in armed conflict.

Article II. To destroy any items falling under Article I, or divert them to peaceful purposes, not later than nine months after entry into force, with all necessary safety precautions to protect populations and the environment.

Article III. Not to transfer any items falling under Article I to any recipient whatsoever, and not in any way to assist, encourage or induce any state, group of states, or international organizations to manufacture or otherwise acquire them.

Article IV. To take any necessary measures, in accordance with a state party's constitutional processes, to prohibit and prevent breaches of Article I within its territory, under its jurisdiction, or under its control anywhere.

Article V. To consult one another and to cooperate in solving any problems that may arise, including through the use of appropriate international procedures.

Article VI. To cooperate in carrying out any investigation that the UN Security Council (UNSC) may initiate, should it receive a complaint from any state party that it finds another state party to be acting in breach of obligations deriving from the BWC.

Article VII. To provide or support assistance to a state party that the UNSC decides has been exposed to danger as a result of a breach of the BWC.

Article IX. To continue negotiations in good faith with a view to reaching early agreement on chemical weapons.5

Article X. To pursue international cooperation in biology for the prevention of disease or for other peaceful purposes, and to implement the BWC in such a way as to avoid hampering the economic or technological development of states parties or international cooperation in the field of biology for peaceful purposes.

Article XII. To review the operation of the BWC, taking into account any new scientific and technological developments relevant to the BWC, five years after entry into force.

(No comparable obligations flow from Articles VIII, XI, XIII, XIV, or XV).

Although only one review was required by Article XII and took place in 1980 (by which time there were 87 parties to the BWC), the states parties have also held review conferences by their own decision in 1986, 1991, 1996, 2001–2002, and 2006. All have taken place in the Palais des Nations at Geneva, with conference servicing provided by the UN Department for Disarmament Affairs under a specific request from the UN General Assembly (in separate resolutions on each occasion) to the secretary-general. Their duration has varied between two and three weeks.

The First Review Conference laid the foundations for the treaty regime to evolve on the basis of extended understandings and procedures agreed by consensus, by drawing out the implications of each article of the BWC and recording them in its Final Declaration. It generated politically binding commitments and set a pattern of cumulative development within the convention as it stands. This purely endogenous process, so long as it generated confidence and enhanced the credibility of the BWC, would continue to obviate any need for treaty amendment or for new legally binding obligations.

As a new layer of the treaty regime, superimposed on these ”original elements,“ the first confidence-building measures (CBMs) on such things as high-containment facilities (biosafety level 4 laboratories, for example), unusual disease outbreaks, publications, conferences, and exchanges of scientific personnel in areas relevant to the BWC were agreed by the Second Review Conference in 1986, with forms and reporting modalities finalized at an ”appendix” Ad Hoc Meeting of Experts in 1987. They were enhanced and expanded by the Third Review Conference in 1991, which added declarations of vaccine production facilities, legislation and controls, defensive and (past) offensive research and development on BW and toxins; these declarations have not been altered since. They, too, constitute politically binding commitments.

From 1991 to 2001, much attention was given to potential ways of strengthening compliance, including possible verification. This might have superimposed (but did not) a third layer upon the original elements and CBMs. The third layer might for the first time have included, for those states parties (and only those) who accepted them, new legally binding obligations. Under the authority of the Third Review Conference, an Ad Hoc Group of Governmental Experts (VEREX) examined verification possibilities from a scientific and technical standpoint. This VEREX group met in 1992 and 1993. The Special Conference of 1994 to which it reported propelled the subject on to the diplomatic agenda and mandated a new Ad Hoc Group of States Parties, which started work in 1995 and had its mandate renewed by the Fourth Review Conference in 1996. This mandate included, but was not limited to, verification as one way of strengthening the operation and the effectiveness of the BWC. The intention was that this (1995) Ad Hoc Group should report to a second Special Conference, which would be able to consider a new, legally binding, instrument (probably in the form of a protocol), if such a thing had been successfully drafted. But it was not to be.

The unsuccessful negotiation of a strengthening protocol, additional or supplementary to the BWC, took place in this Ad Hoc Group of BWC States Parties, which met at Geneva from January 1995 (in negotiating mode from July 1997), until it broke down in deadlock at its twenty-fourth session (July 23–August 17, 2001) and was unable even to agree a procedural report, let alone a substantive document. The Fifth Review Conference took place under the shadow of this failure, in November and December 2001, and had to be adjourned to 2002, when a short Resumed Session adopted a ”rescue plan” drafted by the president of the Fifth Review Conference, Amb. Tibor Tóth of Hungary. Formally, this was a non-negotiable decision on an intersessional process of one-week Meetings of States Parties, preceded by two-week Meetings of Experts each year, considering five defined topics in 2003–2005 and reporting to a Sixth Review Conference in 2006.

That then was the background to the Sixth Review Conference held at Geneva from November 20 to December 8, 2006.6

The Sixth Review Conference: Successes

After the Sixth Review Conference, the BWC is closer to the core of the global regime of biological disarmament than it was before. It is no longer at risk of relegation to the margins of relevance. Still not a strong instrument, and (up to now) chronically under-resourced by governments, it has at least stabilized its condition and started on the road to recovery, valued as a treaty in its own right and attracting more hope than for several years past.

The conference steered a careful course between the extremes of treating bioterrorism as the only threat worth bothering about and shrugging it off as a remote eventuality. The BWC ban is total: no possessors are permitted, whether states or non-state actors. But the BWC has to be used to prevent any recrudescence of biological weapons (BW) activity, whether states or terrorists (or a mixture of the two categories) are implicated. Using it means national implementation, and a heavy emphasis on national precautions and national enforcement is right and proper—but not to the exclusion of international procedures and commitments by the states parties to what is, after all, an international treaty. Here, too, a careful course has always to be steered, and at Geneva in 2006, it was.

The principal successes of the conference were five: endorsing the outcomes of the first intersessional program of Meetings of Experts and Meetings of States Parties each year from 2003 to 2005; timetabling a full second intersessional program of Meetings of Experts and Meetings of States Parties each year from 2007 to 2010; organizing to promote universalization of the convention; upgrading its conference secretariat into an Implementation Support Unit of three full-time staff members funded for the next five years; recording these four agreements (and a fifth, on CBMs, to be discussed in a separate section below) in a Decisions and Recommendations text that, however, did not (as earlier feared) replace but instead sat alongside an extensively rewritten Final Declaration organized article by article and restored to its former strength.

First Intersessional Program (2003–2005)

It was an achievement to be able to endorse the consensus outcome documents from each of the Meetings of States Parties, because many states parties (notably among the Group of the Non-Aligned Movement and Other States, commonly abbreviated as “NAM”) had only embarked on the new process under protest and complained regularly of its inadequacy.7 India declared frankly that its skepticism had been overturned by experience; clearly it was not alone.8 Straightforward endorsement was agreed in 2006 with less difficulty than appeared likely in 2003–2005.

Second Intersessional Program (2007–2010)

In the run-up to the conference, it had been uncertain whether the United States would allow a second intersessional program, or whether it would revert in effect to the hard line taken by U.S. Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John R. Bolton in September 2002, until the Western Group had talked him out of it, that there should be no multilateral BWC meetings of any kind between quinquennial review conferences.9 There was a view that the 2003–2005 program had been an exceptional remedy prescribed in desperate times, and that there would be no need in the easier circumstances of 2006 to repeat the rescue plan supposedly unique to 2002.

Intensive lobbying by European Union (EU) and other Western governments concentrated on persuading the United States that annual BWC meetings would prove as worthwhile in 2007–2010 as they had done in 2003–2005. Once that was accepted, the rest of the Western Group breathed a collective sigh of relief.

After that, it was inevitable that the choice of topics for the intersessional program would not stray far from U.S. preferences, however keenly other states proffered their lists of varying length and content. Nevertheless, in contrast to 2002, when Tibor Tóth's list had been a non-negotiable rescue plan, this time the list was vigorously debated and argued down from eleven possibilities finally to six, through a process of combination and deletion.10 It ended up as a much longer text than the 2002 one, even though it had only one more topic, because each topic was defined more fully to accommodate the range of different groups’ emphases while preserving a strongly U.S.-flavored core.

The six topics for this second intersessional program, with the year to which each has been allocated, are as follows:

1. Ways and means to enhance national implementation, including enforcement of national legislation, strengthening of national institutions, and coordination among national law enforcement institutions (2007).

2. Regional and subregional cooperation on BWC implementation (2007).

3. National, regional, and international measures to improve biosafety and biosecurity, including laboratory safety and security of pathogens and toxins (2008).

4. Oversight, education, raising awareness, and adoption and/or development of codes of conduct with the aim to prevent misuse in the context of advances in bioscience and biotechnology research with the potential of use for purposes prohibited by the BWC (2008).

5. With a view to enhancing international cooperation, assistance, and exchange in biological sciences and technology for peaceful purposes, promoting capacity-building in the fields of disease surveillance, detection, diagnosis, and containment of infectious diseases: (a) for states parties in need of assistance, identifying requirements and requests for capacity enhancement, and (b) from states parties in a position to do so, and international organizations, opportunities for providing assistance related to these fields (2009).

6. Provision of assistance and coordination with relevant organizations upon request by any state party in the case of alleged use of biological or toxin weapons, including improving national capabilities for disease surveillance, detection, and diagnosis and public health systems (2010).11

Unlike 2003–2005, the Meeting of Experts will meet for one week, not two, each year. This may make for overcrowding in 2007 and 2008 with two topics allocated to just one week, but had been urged on grounds of convenience and economy. The 2003–2005 pattern was, however, retained in having the Meeting of States Parties after an interval of several months, which can be used to reflect on the ”factual reports“ from that summer's Meeting of Experts and to consider a “synthesis” document prepared by its chairman. (The retention of the interval was a surprise. Many delegations, especially those of states distant from Geneva, had argued strongly in favor of holding the two meetings back-to-back each year rather than having to send experts in August and diplomats in December to discuss the same topics.)

The mandate of the intersessional process (“to discuss and promote common understanding and effective action on“ each topic) was unchanged from 2002. So, too, was the requirement to produce ”factual reports, conclusions and results” by consensus and feed outcomes into the next review conference.12 The significance of this was to avoid any hint of negotiation or decision, which would have been unacceptable to the United States. New Zealand's proposal to change outcomes into ”a more formal system of recommendations“ may still stand a chance so long as they are recommendations to the next conference in 2011.13 Not so the suggestion from the United Kingdom and France (for the EU) that individual Meetings of States Parties should be empowered to take decisions year by year, where consensus was found, without referral to the Seventh Review Conference.14

A short list of progress-reporting items to be included in the agenda each year made good sense, but the resulting list of “recurrent topics” was dropped late in the conference during the inevitable negotiating process of achieving consensus-by-deletion.15 In practice, no doubt, those delegations that want to give progress reports on other aspects of the BWC will find ways of doing so, as in 2003–2005, notwithstanding the continuing constraint on the formal agenda. Moreover, as the next subsection will show, a residue of the recurrent topics managed to survive the deletion of the list.

Promotion of Universalization

The states parties have always exhorted one another to encourage wider adherence to the BWC, but the Sixth Review Conference was expected to adopt an Action Plan to put these efforts on a systematic footing. Working papers on this theme had been made public in advance by Australia, Italy (for the EU), a group of 12 Latin American states coordinated by Argentina, and South Korea.16 Much publicity had been given to the success of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) in reaching a total of 181 ratifications and accessions, helped since 2003 by its own Action Plan on Universality, while the much older BWC had climbed only to 155.17

The BWC's expected Action Plan was diluted into a ”concerted effort“ on Promotion of Universalization, included in the Decisions and Recommendations.18 But the main elements were saved. For the first time, the states parties have organized themselves to pursue the goal of universalization, through bilateral contacts and regional and multilateral forums, with progress to be reported each year (as a “recurrent topic“ under another name, acceptable to the United States, which would also have allowed reports on the Action Plan on National Implementation, had that proposal survived); with each state party providing a national contact point; with coordination by the chairmen for 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 acting as a group of four; and with distinct tasks assigned to the Implementation Support Unit.19 EU and Australian experience shows that small states considering the implications of joining the BWC often need advice and assistance on national implementation, enforced variously by legislative, administrative, and regulatory means, and on CBM-reporting requirements too, which the unit will be well qualified to provide as integral to its task of supporting the promotion of universalization.

Implementation Support Unit

Upgrading its conference secretariat into an Implementation Support Unit was a good compromise between the Blix Commission proposal for a standing BWC Secretariat (which earlier had been favored by some governments but was not pursued at the conference) and the status quo.20 This decision makes clear the tentative character of the unit, funded from 2007 to 2011 in the first instance, and defines its functions as administrative tasks, CBM-facilitation, and support for the promotion of universalization. In all three areas it exists to support the implementation of the states parties’ decisions. A surviving reference to “comprehensive implementation … of the convention” may prove significant in widening the potential scope of the unit across the breadth of the BWC, if the unit is allowed to act in implementation support beyond the three areas firmly defined in its mandate.21 The unit will have to tread carefully; it has to report concisely each year and will be evaluated at the Seventh Review Conference.

The size of the Implementation Support Unit was agreed with relative ease as “three full-time staff members, within the Geneva Branch of the United Nations Department for Disarmament Affairs.”22 Funding took a little more time, but it was eventually agreed that all states parties should fund it pro rata.

Final Declaration

It may seem odd to count agreement on a Final Declaration (FD) as one of the principal successes of the conference. After all, are not FDs what review conferences are supposed to produce? True, but not every one succeeded, and in 2005–2006 there had been notable failures to produce FDs from the Seventh Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and the Review Conference of the UN Program of Action on Small Arms and Light Weapons. To these failures, moreover, could be added the inability of the September 2005 UN Summit to agree any language whatever on disarmament or nonproliferation.

Within the BWC, the first four review conferences had produced FDs, but the fifth had not. In 2006 there was a perceived danger that the conference might be diverted down the road of a quite different “outcome document,” leaving large areas of the convention unaddressed and the status of previously recorded agreements uncertain. The Fifth Review Conference at its resumed session in November 2002 had not even tried to agree an FD but had concentrated exclusively on Tóth's rescue plan, formulated as a non-negotiable decision. On that uniquely desperate occasion, it had been the decision or nothing, but some governments had gone so far as to claim it as an improvement on the usual FD as a conference outcome.

If that view had prevailed in 2006, the Sixth Review Conference might have repeated the pattern of 2002. But it did not have to be just one outcome or the other. Fortunately, the conference had the good sense to work on both kinds of outcome document together and so ended up with an article-by-article FD and a set of Decisions and Recommendations. Of equal status, they constitute Part II and Part III respectively of the Final Document of the conference. (Part I, the standard procedural history, records its Organization & Work.) This ”double-maximum” outcome was a distinct success and sets a good precedent for the seventh and subsequent review conferences.

Newly Recorded Understandings

The successes discussed above were all contained in the text of the Decisions and Recommendations. The Final Declaration now deserves further attention in its own right. A few examples must suffice of the newly recorded understandings, article by article.

Article I

Proclaiming in the face of scientific developments unforeseen in 1971 the comprehensiveness of Article I, with its general purpose criterion applying to microbial and other biological agents and to toxins without exception, has been one of the most fundamental FD functions since the First Review Conference in 1980.23 In the 2006 FD Paragraph 1, this function is achieved more explicitly than before:

The Conference reaffirms the importance of Article I, as it defines the scope of the Convention. The Conference declares that the Convention is comprehensive in its scope and that all naturally or artificially created or altered microbial and other biological agents and toxins, as well as their components, regardless of their origin and method of production and whether they affect humans, animals or plants, of types and in quantities that have no justification for prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes, are unequivocally covered by Article I.

The word order, restored to its 1986 form, eliminated a doubt over the comprehensiveness of the BWC's scope that might have crept in from an accidental reordering of clauses in 1991 and 1996.24 Any novel biological agents produced by synthesis are definitely covered, since the words ”all naturally or artificially created or altered“ now precede ”microbial and other biological agents“ and are now once again unambiguously seen to apply to those entities as well as to toxins.

The conference had also to decide whether, and if so how, to extend the list of sciences concerning which ”apprehensions“ were of special relevance to the BWC. In 1996, the Fourth Review Conference, ”conscious of apprehensions arising from relevant scientific and technological developments, inter alia, in the fields of microbiology, biotechnology, molecular biology, genetic engineering, and any applications arising from genome studies, and the possibility of their use for purposes inconsistent with the objectives and the provisions of the Convention, reaffirms that the undertaking given by the States Parties in Article I applies to all such developments.”25

Under the cumulative method of 1980–1996, the expectation was that the list would be extended. This had been advocated in 2001 and again in 2006.26 For example, proteomics, or bioinformatics, or systems biology, or synthetic biology, or any combination of these, might be added to genomics, to follow the “older” four items in the list.27 The Netherlands argued in a science and technology background paper that nanotechnology now needed a special mention in this part of the FD.28

But the danger of such lists is that they risk being misread as exhaustive, however often their purely illustrative character is stated by phrases such as “for example” and “inter alia.” Extending the list might aggravate this tendency, so instead the conference replaced the old list of apprehensions with a single short sentence (FD Paragraph 2): “The Conference reaffirms that Article I applies to all scientific and technological developments in the life sciences and in other fields of science relevant to the Convention.”

This solution had an elegant simplicity. It encompassed nanotechnology without singling it out (which might have provoked disagreement) for special mention. It accepted that developments outside as well as inside the life sciences can be relevant to the BWC. But it did not attempt to propound any implied hierarchy of risk. Instead, it echoed the comprehensiveness of Paragraph 1.

Article III

Article III is the nonproliferation clause of the BWC. It groups the four prohibitions on transfer, assistance, encouragement, and inducement. The 2006 FD reaffirmed the long-established understanding, first proposed by Finland in 1986, ”that Article III is sufficiently comprehensive to cover any recipient whatsoever at the international, national, or sub-national levels,“ but in the same Paragraph 8 it also added the words ”including effective national export controls“ to its traditional call ”for appropriate measures by all States Parties to implement this Article.” This addition was suggested by the United States.29 It would not have been acceptable earlier, when hostility to the Australia Group was at its height, because national export controls would have been suspected of concealing protectionist motives behind the mask of nonproliferation concerns. Now BWC states parties commend and even call for such controls, still side by side with one of the surviving paragraphs (now 10), which continues to warn against misuse of Article III under the guise of pursuing nonproliferation goals. States parties continue to express the balance between Article III and Article X in traditional terms.30

The 2006 FD also introduced a new paragraph (9) corresponding to the heightened awareness of biosecurity in terms of access and handling: “The Conference calls for appropriate measures by all States Parties to ensure that biological agents and toxins relevant to the Convention are protected and safeguarded, including through measures to control access to and handling of such agents and toxins.” This new paragraph has its roots in language proposed by the EU and the United States.31

Article IV

Biosecurity as a new emphasis is also prominent in the rewritten Article IV. One of the purposes for which penal legislation should be designed is to ”ensure the safety and security of microbial or other biological agents or toxins in laboratories, facilities, and during transportation, to prevent unauthorized access to and removal of such agents or toxins” (Paragraph 11.iii). The reference to penal legislation is strengthened to make sure that it is included in national implementation and not just (as before) one possible example among others of an appropriate measure that an implementing state party might take in accordance with its constitutional processes.

Two of the most interesting additions to this much-expanded section concern the responsibilities of scientists and other “relevant professionals“ and encourage whistle-blowing in the context of codes of conduct, professional self-regulatory mechanisms, awareness of risk, and the need for training and education in support of BWC compliance—all subjects much ventilated during the Meeting of Experts and Meeting of States Parties in 2005. The results of the intersessional process clearly influenced the drafting of these paragraphs (14 and 15).

The conference had also to consider what to say about UNSC Resolution 1540 of April 28, 2004 and its implications for the BWC. In Paragraph 17, the conference states that Resolution 1540 ”places obligations on all states and is consistent with the provisions of the Convention.” Moreover, there is no need for the compliance burden on national bureaucracies to be doubled. Paragraph 17 continues: “The Conference also notes that information provided to the United Nations by states in accordance with Resolution 1540 may provide a useful resource for States Parties in fulfilling their obligations under this Article.”

Another new paragraph (18) in this section, relied on twice in the Decisions and Recommendations, “encourages States Parties to designate a national focal point for coordinating national implementation of the Convention and communicating with other States Parties and relevant international organizations.”32 This paragraph was proposed by China, but it also develops out of EU practice in its Joint Action in support of BWC implementation and outreach.33 (In many cases EU member states designated the BWC desk officer in their ministry of foreign affairs.) Encouragement to designate a national focal point falls short of requiring an obligatory national authority, as under Article VII of the Chemical Weapons Convention, but some BWC states parties have already taken the further step of having a single national authority for the CWC and BWC combined.

Article X

Although still lengthy, as befits the sector of the BWC treaty regime of greatest interest to the NAM majority of its states parties, the Article X section is pruned of some of its accumulated bulk without losing anything of substance with regard to international cooperation for peaceful purposes. Here it will suffice to note the new paragraph (56) with which the section ends: “The Conference recognizes the important role of the private sector in the transfer of technology and information and the wide range of organizations within the United Nations system that are already engaged in international cooperation relevant to this Convention.” This addition was proposed by Finland for the EU.34

Limitations I: What Was Unsuccessful in 2006

The main disappointment of the Sixth Review Conference was its failure to agree an Action Plan on National Implementation, comparable to the one that the states parties to the CWC ran with some success from 2003 to 2005 to promote fuller compliance with the CWC's Article VII and that their Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has followed up systematically since 2005.35 The BWC's Article IV is no less important than the CWC's Article VII, and until the final week of the conference the prospects looked bright for the new Implementation Support Unit to be authorized to give states parties systematic help with the national implementation—legislation, regulation, enforcement, etc.—of their BWC obligations.36 Unfortunately, the NAM campaign for much more attention to be given to Article X, after a belated start, was now about to cut across this Article IV action plan. The conference was nearly deadlocked. At Khan's initiative it became belatedly entangled in a “comprehensive implementation” action plan that, for the best of motives, would have embraced peaceful-uses cooperation under Article X as well.37 The balance of Article IV and Article X elements in the plan proved impossible to redraft to the satisfaction of both the United States (which wanted to emphasize Article IV) and Iran (which wanted to emphasize Article X), so both were lost. It is some comfort that the Joint Action agreed by the EU in support of the BWC, embracing among other activities provision of outreach and assistance in national implementation, continues into 2007, and that bilateral and regional efforts are given general encouragement.38 Yet it was high time that the states parties as a whole took up this responsibility and organized themselves systematically to deliver an Action Plan on National Implementation. The opportunity was missed.

Moreover, the systematic assessment of new scientific and technological developments relevant to the convention failed to be built into the intersessional program as a more frequent activity that would benefit the states parties collectively. This was a casualty of the wider failure to have a short list of recurrent topics allowed on to the agenda of the Meetings of States Parties to be held each year from 2007 to 2010. Their agenda was kept almost as tightly constrained as in 2003–2005. No alternative method of conducting such an assessment of science and technology between 2006 and 2011 was agreed either. It remains something that at best will get done, inadequately, in the margins of another intersessional topic, probably at the (August) Meeting of Experts. This is no way to handle a subject of the importance of science and technology. It is carried forward to 2011 by Paragraph 61(i) of the FD, in the spirit of Article XII, but how will it be handled then, after a five-year gap? No review conference has yet found a way of doing justice to this fundamental aspect of BWC reviews. Scientific advisors attached to delegations remain underused, as they were back in 1980.39

Limitations II: What Was Not Even Attempted in 2006

It is important to note the limits of what was attempted at the Sixth Review Conference. The delegates at Geneva did not risk setting their sights too high. Several matters, of undoubted importance in the wider context of a global regime of biological disarmament, were left off the agenda altogether.

The delegates did not, for example, try to regulate research and development in the life sciences. This is something that must surely come one day, if biological disarmament is to be made secure, but that involves so many different stakeholders—including the private sector in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries—that it is not easy to tackle through the BWC (a treaty that, for reasons of its negotiating history, omits the word “research” from its text entirely).40 The BWC does not directly embody a regime of research, and probably never can, but an accompanying regime of research, independently arrived at, would make the treaty ban on biological weapons development easier to enforce by setting the limits of what is allowed further distant from potentially offensive purposes.41

Moreover, the Accountability Framework prepared by Canada, although two or three of its individual elements were agreed, was not engaged with as substantively as its policy relevance and logical coherence deserved. It is the most promising conceptual device for BWC analysis to have emerged in 2006. It merits serious and sustained attention.42

Last but not least, the BWC's long-standing institutional deficit remained unremedied. The conference could have addressed this by putting in place a modest set of interim strengthening structures in support of the BWC, taking their authority from one review conference and expiring unless renewed by the next, under a kind of sunset clause. This could have been done conveniently under Article XII as an agreement on follow-up to bridge the interval between 2006 and 2011.43 An Annual Meeting of States Parties with an agenda ranging across the BWC as a whole would have been a natural evolution from the Meetings of States Parties held in 2003, 2004, and 2005. Failing that, an Intersessional Committee of Oversight could have been constituted, perhaps by prolonging the life of the conference's General Committee (Bureau) into the gap between reviews. Either body could usefully have been supported by a Scientific Advisory Panel, a Legal Advisory Panel, and a standing Secretariat. The options had been fully set out.44 But the conference, having made heavy weather of the relatively straightforward matter of an Implementation Support Unit, was evidently in no mood to do anything more to diminish the BWC's institutional deficit; the new unit would have to suffice. This is asking too much of it.

The future of biological disarmament will require facing up to these challenges sooner or later—but it didn't happen in 2006 and possibly won't even in 2011.

Verification and Compliance

Verification was firmly off the agenda, too.

Did the Sixth Review Conference move the BWC closer to international verification, or further away? The answer is neither. No one modified their previously stated positions. These remain wide apart, but in reiterating their positions no one tried to push the issue to center-stage. So it is still the case that the EU and its wider group of 36 states remain committed to developing measures for verifying BWC compliance as a long-term goal; that those in the NAM say they want a legally binding instrument, resembling the failed protocol but more comprehensive, on an implicitly shorter time scale; and that the United States remains implacably opposed to any protocol and convinced that the BWC is unverifiable.

At Geneva, as in the run-up to the conference, there was a resolute determination to achieve a successful outcome by consensus. So, on verification and compliance, the United States did not try (as Bolton had done on the final day, exactly five years before) to abolish the moribund Ad Hoc Group and its 1994/1996 mandate, but from neither the EU nor the NAM was there any attempt to reactivate it.45 Instead, there was a general search for common ground elsewhere. U.S. sensitivity was still much in evidence, though. Because of 1994 and 1996 (when the Fourth Review Conference had recorded “its recognition that effective verification could reinforce the Convention”), there could be no blanket reaffirmation of everything earlier conferences had agreed.46 Even Khan's mollifying attempt to have the “solemn” opening section of the FD culminate in the conference ”recognizing the enduring value of previous Final Declarations” was too much for the U.S. delegation, which obliged the conference to remove any hint of such linkage to previous documents in favor of a much vaguer reference to Article XII (the origin of and authority for the review process).47 Fortunately individual reaffirmations scattered through the article-by-article sections of the 2006 FD confirmed the continuing authority of the most important commitments and extended understandings from the FDs of 1980–1996, other than those concerning verification, so little if anything was lost. But the sensitivity was there, nonetheless.

In terms of a multilayered BWC regime of compliance, the absence of the new verification layer widely (though by no means universally) expected to emerge from the Ad Hoc Group of 1995–2001 means that the original elements of the regime are still overlaid by only one layer—CBMs.48 CBMs received little attention at the Fourth and Fifth Review Conferences. By 2006 it was imperative to take them seriously.49 Had the right measures been identified in 1986 and 1991? Were the initial and annual declarations under each CBM actually succeeding in their presumed purpose of enhancing the transparency of national data across borders? Why were only some states parties (approximately one-third, in 2006) making declarations at all? Had the reporting modalities of 1987, slightly adjusted in 1991, proved their worth, or did they need changing? Above all, how could the CBM layer be used to engender confidence in the BWC's regime of compliance—to become, in effect, a functional substitute for verification?

Confidence-Building Measures: An Equivocal Outcome

The conference included a section on CBMs among its Decisions and Recommendations, but it is deliberately not included here among the successes of 2006 (discussed above). This is because the Sixth Review Conference was blocked at almost every turn in trying to improve CBM arrangements. It ended up allowing a slight shift into secure electronic communication among governments and laying related tasks upon the new Implementation Support Unit, while everything else was postponed to 2011. It was an equivocal outcome. The conference claimed, with some exaggeration, that it had ”reviewed the implementation of the CBMs during its session“ and, with some relief, ”agreed that the issue merits further and comprehensive attention at the Seventh Review Conference.”50 In fact the conference had been bogged down in preliminary skirmishing around a series of negatives. It never reached the stage of reviewing CBM implementation in any substantive sense.

France, for the EU, and the Latin American group of 12 coordinated by Argentina had proposed before the conference began that CBMs should be a topic for the intersessional process.51 China added that CBMs needed ”further deliberation before the Seventh Review Conference.”52 This made good sense in historical perspective; in March 1987 an ad hoc meeting of experts, convened as an “appendix” to the Second Review Conference and under its authority, had finalized the modalities for CBM reporting, including the original forms (modified in 1991 when the CBMs were expanded and enhanced). An equivalent special appendix meeting had been proposed by Daniel Feakes and Graham Pearson for 2007, to be fitted in to the main intersessional pattern of Meetings of Experts and Meetings of States Parties to make it more acceptable to delegations anxious to limit the total number of meetings allocated to the BWC in the intersessional period.53 However, the United States opposed the inclusion of CBMs on the list of intersessional topics, presumably because it was apprehensive about new commitments (even though only politically binding) being added, or new reporting burdens being imposed upon states parties.

Instead, the United States wanted CBMs discussed within the review conference itself as had been done, with some success, in 1991. It proposed a special working group on CBMs to occupy much of the second week. This in turn was opposed by other delegations. Some delegations, especially the NAM, may have feared that too much time spent on CBMs would drive consideration of their cherished Article X (peaceful uses) off the conference agenda for lack of time; others may have judged (correctly, as it turned out) that the rapid progress of the first few days would not last, and that therefore there would not be the space in the second week of which the United States hoped to make use for a CBMs working group.

A fruitless series of negatives followed. This procedural morass delayed the presentation of the most substantial working papers, from France and Switzerland respectively, which if considered earlier could have raised the conference's sights to a higher level of debate on CBMs and their future.54 At any rate, it would have had to confront the striking unevenness in CBM response rates when analyzed region by region, as the French paper had done. And it might have been inclined to give the new Implementation Support Unit a slightly more active role in facilitating a higher rate of CBM returns. But yet another negative, this time from Algeria, blocked even procedural progress. As a result, even follow-up by the Implementation Support Unit was restricted; because CBM reporting is not a legally binding obligation on states, they must not be sent reminders when their annual returns are overdue.55 The most the unit is allowed to do is to inform them three months ahead of the April 15 submission date each year.56

The conference decided to allow electronic reporting through a secure Web Site, but governments that preferred paper reporting could still use that medium.57 Electronic distribution had been trialed with six states parties—Australia, Finland, Malaysia, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom—consenting to their 2006 CBM reports being posted by the United Nations on a BWC Web Site, provided they were not further copied or reproduced. Language in the decision tightens up this security: “The information supplied by a State Party must not be further circulated or made available without the express permission of that State Party.”58 CBM returns will presumably retreat to the reserved area of the site, to which access is safeguarded by password authenticated by a government's permanent mission in Geneva or New York, in order to ensure that prying eyes do not intrude on these government-to-government exchanges of information. Whether this procedure will build confidence, or simply reinforce defensiveness, is open to question. Those governments that for years past have been happy to publish their own returns as publicly available documents will presumably continue to do so, and academic research will come to rely increasingly on those returns alone, which may well skew the analysis.

The ”further attention“ accorded to the whole issue of CBMs in 2011 will indeed need to be ”comprehensive,” and it would help if delegations could agree in advance how the Seventh Review Conference is to address the subject, in a working group or otherwise, so that another opportunity is not wasted.59

CBMs will in any case become less important if other ways of voluntarily demonstrating compliance through greater transparency, not limited to the categories negotiated in 1986–1987 and 1991, develop during the intersessional period. This may well happen under pressure from the scrutiny machinery set up under UNSC Resolution 1540, or it may simply evolve within the BWC itself as the more forthcoming states parties find their own ways of enhancing the information they provide, using new categories free of the suspicion of anachronism, in order to put their compliance proudly on display.60 It is surely in their interests to do so, if they can only see it.

Why Did the Conference Succeed?

What made the conference succeed, to the extent that it did? First and foremost, everyone set their sights low. Even the most ardent “friends of the convention” among nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) tempered their recommendations and confined their ambitions to modest objectives. The realistic aim was to secure a consensus outcome document, preferably with some attempt at an article-by-article FD and a reaffirmation of the extended understandings accumulated in earlier FDs; a second intersessional program; action plans for universalization and national implementation; and an implementation support unit or enhanced secretariat. That was the minimum—many would have added to it, as common ground, allowing the second intersessional process to handle recurrent items (progress on the action plans, science and technology, and CBMs) or finding some other means of dealing more systematically with CBMs and with collective scrutiny of relevant developments in science and technology harnessing expert advice.

Second, this common ground had been established in group preparation. The long-established Western, Eastern, and NAM groups remained, but three other groupings—the EU, the Latin American 12, and the “JACKSNNZ”—took the lead.61 The EU and the Latin American group had published their working papers in advance. The JACKSNNZ were a looser group, and individual papers were nationally owned though prepared in consultation with the other six members, but the papers authored by Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, and Switzerland (South Korea's came later and was less convergent) showed a marked degree of convergence with the views advocated by the “EU-plus” and the Latin American 12. (The EU had 25 member states at the time, but 11 other European states associated themselves with its BWC positions.)62 The Latin Americans overlapped with the NAM, and the other two groups included many of the closest U.S. allies. So here, if anywhere, the middle ground was revealed on which the conference, even if initially polarized between the hardliners of the NAM and the United States, could hope to find consensus.

Third, neither Iran nor the United States tested the conference to destruction. However encouraging the convergence of views among the EU-plus, Latin American 12, and JACKSNNZ groups, everything could still have been ruined by Iranian or U.S. intransigence. There had been fears throughout 2006 that acrimony between the two in nuclear and other issue-areas would spill over into the BWC and that if either side took too hard a line the other would dig its heels in and prevent the achievement of consensus—and hence of any outcome whatever from the Sixth Review Conference.63 The conference saw a repetition of the pattern established at its Preparatory Committee Meeting (April 26–28, 2006): the two delegations were further apart than the others, and they delayed but did not ultimately prevent agreement—in April on the provisional agenda for the conference, in December on the final document with its FD and its Decisions and Recommendations. It was fortunate that the UNSC Resolution 1737 on sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, widely expected to coincide with the conference, was in fact delayed until December 23.

The “naming” of alleged violators was less damaging than in 2001.64 The United States, having made its initial statement on the first morning, did not press the issue, and the FD this time did not draw attention to differences of perception on alleged violations.65 As for the two states parties and one signatory-only that were named: Iran and Syria did not go beyond a single statement of rebuttal (Iran's in the course of its national statement, Syria's near the end of the general debate), and North Korea, as usual, did not even attend the conference. And Article VI, the complaints procedure, remains unused.

Perhaps, too, attitudes in the United States toward the usefulness of multilateral approaches had become more favorable, and its agenda had become less isolated from the BWC mainstream. Other states parties had meanwhile accepted some U.S. positions. This time, the United States was willing to see the BWC as useful, and the others were willing to see it as one among several tools available. As for threat definition, a sensible balance was struck between old and new. New language was added to the FD to recognize U.S. concerns (with the word “terrorism” being used little and “war on terror” not at all, so those who prefer to tackle terrorist threats in a criminal justice perspective and therefore subsume them under the heading of criminality are still just as free to do so as before), but enough traditional language was retained to ensure that older threats would not be ignored. Acceptance of Resolution 1540 and its UNSC follow-up since 2004 was a constructive sign that the consensus would hold.

The function of the Sixth Review Conference had been predetermined as one of clearing away the debris left from the dissensions of the past, mostly by not referring to the past. It was important that it should succeed in this modest task, and avert (once again) the danger of being paralyzed by U.S.-Iranian acrimony, so that the Seventh and Eighth Review Conferences are freer to pursue a constructive evolution of the BWC through the years following 2011 and 2016, adapting the treaty regime to changing pressures and in the light of complementary approaches to the safeguarding of biological disarmament. And even 2006 had its achievements—admittedly few, but just enough to add up to a modest success, and to bring new impetus to a treaty that for too long had stagnated in the doldrums of disarmament diplomacy.

Finally, there was a fortunate absence of “megaphone diplomacy.” Kofi Annan set the scene well, and it is not unreasonable to attribute the conference outcome in part to the secretary-general, who was then about to retire after 10 years in post. He concluded his eloquent opening address: “Your efforts over the past four years have put you in a good position to make further progress. Differences will remain. But I urge you to find, once again, creative and resourceful ways around them. Far more unites you than divides you. The horror of biological weapons is shared by all. As the Convention states, their use would be ‘repugnant to the conscience of mankind.’ I urge you to seize the opportunity presented by this conference.”66

And so, to the extent necessary, they did, giving fresh hope for the future of biological disarmament.

Conclusion

”One of the main lessons from implementation of the Convention over 30 years is that the Convention needs constant attention nationally and by States Parties collectively. It is not a Treaty signed and implemented 30 years ago. States Parties have individual (national) and collective (regional, multilateral, international) responsibilities under the Convention and the [2003–2005] program of work assisted in not only clarifying what such responsibilities are, but also how obligations can be implemented” (emphasis added).67 That was stated in a joint paper from the United Kingdom and France that made the case for further intersessional work after 2006. It formed part of an intensive EU lobbying effort to persuade the United States.

Constant attention, collectively as well as nationally, is indeed going to be needed if the life of the BWC is to sustain the hopes generated at Geneva in 2006 and to see its treaty regime steadily reinforced in an endogenous process up to, and including, the Seventh Review Conference in 2011. Endogeny means continuing to draw on the latent strength, and draw out the implications, of the BWC as it stands.

There is much scope for the “friends of the BWC” to nurture it through taking such action as may be open to them to promote a sense of its wider unofficial “ownership,” in terms of civil society involvement. In particular, they need to deepen their exploration of its implications and potential in a constructive evolution balanced across the different sectors of the BWC treaty regime.68 But however much the academic, scientific, and NGO communities contribute to this exploration, they are unlikely ever to be able to convert advocacy into action as fully as governments can. Nothing can, or should, allow the states parties to shuffle off onto other shoulders their responsibilities for a convention that is primordially and inescapably theirs.

Policy and research agendas should converge on the most promising ideas. Canada's Accountability Framework, further developed, could provide the best conceptual device for the next stage, combined with endogeny, as an organizing principle for this process of constructive evolution.69

The future of biological disarmament will be shaped by synergies and complementary initiatives among a multiplicity of authorities and agencies at all levels. Some are national and some international. But the BWC, with its structure of international obligations to be nationally implemented, is still at the center of this complex edifice. No longer ”a lone monolith confronting the biological weapon threat“ as in the early 1970s, it is now ”a crucial keystone among numerous instruments and initiatives in our collective defence against poisoning and deliberate disease.”70 And as such, if the whole edifice is not to crumble, the BWC must be kept sound, strong, and solid.

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Richard Guthrie, Filippa Lentzos, Graham S. Pearson, and members of delegations to the BWC Sixth Review Conference who by convention must remain unnamed, for help in forming a fuller picture of proceedings at Geneva; Jonathan B. Tucker for originally suggesting this article and encouraging its progress; Barbara King for word processing and administrative assistance; and the anonymous reviewers for comments on drafts.

Notes

1. On the “web of prevention”: International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Statement to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) Sixth Review Conference, November 21, 2006. The phrase had been in ICRC use since 2002. On the role of other instruments: Jez Littlewood, The Biological Weapons Convention: A Failed Revolution (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 232–241.

2. Amb. Masood Khan of Pakistan, “President's Closing Remarks,” BWC Sixth Review Conference, December 8, 2006,<www.unog.ch/80256EDD006B8954/(httpAssets)/D9B3F812B9202A22C1257241002D6382/$file/President_closing_remarks_8_Dec.pdf>.

3. The longer form “Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC)” is favored by the European Union (EU) and its member states and by the governments of some non-EU states. BWC remains the standard UN usage. Practice varies as between governments and among academic and scientific commentators on the convention.

4. Amb. Masood Khan, “Opening Statement by the President of the Sixth Review Conference of the Biological Weapons Convention,” November 20, 2006.

5. The Chemical Weapons Convention was negotiated 1972–1992, opened for signature in 1993, and entered into force in 1997. As of 2007, it has 181 states parties.

6. For fuller accounts and analyses of this history up to 1985, see Nicholas A. Sims, The Diplomacy of Biological Disarmament: Vicissitudes of a Treaty in Force, 1975–85 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988); up to 1998, see Nicholas A. Sims, The Evolution of Biological Disarmament, SIPRI Chemical & Biological Warfare Studies 19 (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2001); up to 2002, see Jez Littlewood, The Biological Weapons Convention: A Failed Revolution (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2005); for the more recent period up to 2006, see Richard Lennane, “Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat: The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention since 2001,” UN Institute for Disarmament Research, Geneva, Disarmament Forum 2006/3 (September 2006), pp. 5–15.

7. On the consensus: see Final Document of the BWC Sixth Review Conference, BWC/CONF.VI/6, December 8, 2006, Decisions and Recommendations, Paragraph 4. On the background: Nicholas A. Sims, “Towards the BWC Review Conference: Diplomacy Still in the Doldrums,” Disarmament Diplomacy 82 (Spring 2006), pp. 8–16.

8. Statement by Amb. Jayant Prasad of India to the BWC Sixth Review Conference, November 20, 2006.

9. Nicholas A. Sims, “Biological Disarmament Diplomacy in the Doldrums: Reflections after the BWC Fifth Review Conference,” Disarmament Diplomacy 70 (April/May 2003), p. 13.

10. For a detailed account of the successive draft lists of topics proposed as the negotiation intensified, see Graham S. Pearson, “The Biological Weapons Convention Sixth Review Conference,” CBW Conventions Bulletin 74 (December 2006), pp. 29–31, <www.sussex.ac.uk/Units/spru/hsp/CBWCB74.pdf>.

11. Final Document of the BWC Sixth Review Conference, BWC/CONF.VI/6, December 8, 2006, Decisions and Recommendations, Paragraph 7.

12. Final Document of the BWC Fifth Review Conference, BWC/CONF.V/17, November 15, 2002, Paragraphs 18–20.

13. New Zealand, “BWC Working Paper on the Intersessional Process,” BWC/CONF.VI/WP.18, November 2006, Paragraph 5.

14. United Kingdom and France, “EU Paper on the Intersessional Program of Work: Its Utility and Contribution to Fulfilling the Object and Purpose of the BTWC between 2003–2005 and a Case for Further Intersessional Work after 2006,” BWC/CONF.VI/WP.8, September 19, 2006, Paragraph 20.

15. Richard Guthrie, “[Wednesday, December 6] The Thirteenth Day: A Bumpy Ride after a Smooth Start,” BioWeapons Prevention Project, RevCon Report 14, December 7, 2006; “[Thursday, December 7] Final Issues of Concern: The End-Game is Played out,” BioWeapons Prevention Project, RevCon Report 15, December 8, 2006. By December 6, the list of recurrent topics had reportedly been reduced to five: universality, national implementation, scientific and technological developments, confidence-building measures, and coordination with other international bodies. The RevCon Reports, produced in Geneva and distributed outside the conference room on the morning following the day reported on, may be accessed at <www.bwpp.org/6RevCon/6thRevConResources.html>.

16. Australia, “Paper on an Action Plan for Realizing the Universalization of the BTWC,” BWC/CONF.VI/WP.15, September 2006; Italy, “EU Paper on Increasing Universal Adherence to the BTW Convention,” BWC/CONF.VI/WP.6, September 2006; Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, “Paper on Universalization,” BWC/CONF.VI/WP.9, September 2006; Republic of Korea, “Paper on the Universality of the BWC,” BWC/CONF.VI/WP.19, November 2006.

17. Daniel Feakes and Graham S. Pearson, “Achieving the Outcomes of the Sixth Review Conference,” UN Institute for Disarmament Research, Geneva, Disarmament Forum 2006/3 (September 2006), pp. 37–39.

18. Final Document of the BWC Sixth Review Conference, BWC/CONF.VI/6, December 8, 2006, Decisions and Recommendations, Paragraph 10.

19. Final Document of the BWC Sixth Review Conference, BWC/CONF.VI/6, December 8, 2006, Decisions and Recommendations, Paragraph 11.

20. Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, Chairman Hans Blix, Weapons of Terror: Freeing the World of Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Arms (Stockholm: Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, 2006), Recommendation 34, p. 119.

21. Final Document of the BWC Sixth Review Conference, BWC/CONF.VI/6, December 8, 2006, Decisions and Recommendations, Paragraph 5.

22. Final Document of the BWC Sixth Review Conference, BWC/CONF.VI/6, December 8, 2006, Decisions and Recommendations, Paragraph 5.

23. Final Document of the BWC [First] Review Conference, BWC/CONF.I/10, March 21, 1980, Final Declaration; Final Document of the BWC Second Review Conference, BWC/CONF.II/13/II, September 26, 1986, Final Declaration; Final Document of the BWC Third Review Conference, BWC/CONF.III/23, September 27, 1991, Final Declaration; Final Document of the BWC Fourth Review Conference, BWC/CONF.IV/9, December 6, 1996, Final Declaration.

24. Final Document of the BWC Second Review Conference, Final Declaration.

25. Final Document of the BWC Fourth Review Conference, Final Declaration.

26. Malcolm R. Dando and Simon M. Whitby, “Article I—Scope,” in Graham S. Pearson, Nicholas A. Sims, and Malcolm R. Dando (eds.), Key Points for the Sixth Review Conference (Bradford, United Kingdom: University of Bradford, Department of Peace Studies, 2006) pp. 66–68.

27. India, proposal on Article I, “Proposed Language Submitted to the Committee of the Whole,” BWC/CONF.VI/CRP.1, November 24, 2006, Paragraph 7.

28. The Netherlands, “Scientific and Technological Developments Relevant to the Biological Weapons Convention,” September 2006, BWC/CONF.VI/INF.4, Misc. 5, in the series of national background papers made available in advance of the conference as contributions to its background document on new developments in science and technology.

29. United States, proposal on Article III, “Proposed Language Submitted to the Committee of the Whole,” BWC/CONF.VI/CRP.1, November 24, 2006, Paragraph 35; Japan (at Paragraph 32 of the same document) had proposed “catch-all controls.”

30. United States, proposal on Article III, China at Paragraph 24 and India at Paragraph 31.

31. United States, proposal on Article III, Finland on behalf of the EU at Paragraph 27, and the United States at Paragraphs 36, 37, 39, and 40.

32. Final Document of the BWC Sixth Review Conference, BWC/CONF.VI/6, December 8, 2006, Decisions and Recommendations, Paragraph 8(vi) in relation to confidence-building measures, and Paragraphs 11(a)(iii) and 11(c)(ii) in relation to the promotion of universalization.

33. China, proposal on Article IV, “Proposed Language Submitted to the Committee of the Whole,” BWC/CONF.VI/CRP.1, November 24, 2006, Paragraph 42; European Union, “EU Council Joint Action in Support of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention,” 2006/184/CFSP, February 27, 2006, published in the Official Journal of the European Union, L 65/51, March 7, 2006.

34. Finland on behalf of the EU, proposal on Article X, at Paragraph 173 of BWC/CONF.VI/CRP.1.

35. Santiago Oñate, Ralf Trapp, and Lisa Tabassi, “Decision on the Follow-Up to the OPCW Action Plan on Article VII: Ensuring the Effective Implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention,” CBW Conventions Bulletin 69 and 70 (September–December 2005), pp. 5–10.

36. Finland on behalf of the EU, proposal on Action Plan on National Implementation, in ”Proposed Language Submitted to the Committee of the Whole,” BWC/CONF.VI/CRP.1, November 24, 2006, Paragraphs 244–246. Earlier papers in favor had included those of Germany, “EU Paper on Assessment of National Implementation of the BTWC,” BWC/CONF.VI/WP.2, September 19, 2006; and Japan, “Paper on Review of National Implementation of the BWC,” BWC/CONF.VI/WP.17, September 2006.

37. Guthrie, RevCon Report 15, December 8, 2006.

38. Final Document of the BWC Sixth Review Conference, BWC/CONF.VI/6, December 8, 2006, Final Declaration, Paragraph 16.

39. Sims, Diplomacy of Biological Disarmament, p. 119.

40. Jozef Goldblat, SIPRI, The Problem of Chemical and Biological Warfare, Volume IV: CB Disarmament Negotiations, 1920–1970 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1971), pp. 316–320.

41. Sims, Evolution of Biological Disarmament, pp. 176–182.

42. Canada, “Towards the Sixth BTWC Review Conference: An Accountability Framework,” BWC/CONF.VI/WP.1, April (and following) 2006. In particular, the ideas of a new accountability session within the Meeting of States Parties, and of a comprehensive accountability package of balanced elements as key to strengthening the treaty regime, await further development.

43. Nicholas A. Sims and Graham S. Pearson, “Article XII: Review Conferences,” in Pearson, Sims, and Dando (eds.), Key Points for the Sixth Review Conference, pp. 217–231.

44. Nicholas A. Sims, “Strengthening Structures for the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention: Options for Remedying the Institutional Deficit,” UN Institute for Disarmament Research, Geneva, Disarmament Forum 2006/3 (September 2006), pp. 17–26.

45. Lennane, “Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat,” pp. 5, 9.

46. Final Document of the BWC Fourth Review Conference, Final Declaration, Paragraph 7 of the Solemn Declaration, which (as in 1991 and 2006) preceded the article-by-article sections.

47. Richard Guthrie, “[Tuesday, December 5] Working Towards a Conclusion: More Text Agreed,” BioWeapons Prevention Project, RevCon Report 13, December 6, 2006; Final Document of the BWC Sixth Review Conference, Final Declaration, Paragraph xi of the Solemn Declaration: “[The States Parties … solemnly declare] xi. Their recognition of their consideration of the issues identified in reviewing the operation of the Convention as provided for in Article XII, as well as their consensus on the follow-up actions contained herein.”

48. Sims, Evolution of Biological Disarmament, pp. 23, 116–118.

49. Iris Hunger and Nicolas Isla, “Confidence-Building Needs Transparency: An Analysis of the BTWC's Confidence-Building Measures,” UN Institute for Disarmament Research, Geneva, Disarmament Forum 2006/3 (September 2006), pp. 27–36.

50. Final Document of the BWC Sixth Review Conference, Decisions and Recommendations, Paragraph 9.

51. France, “EU Paper on the Enhancement of the CBM Process,” BWC/CONF.VI/WP.4, September 19, 2006; Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay, “Paper on CBMs,” BWC/CONF.VI/WP.12, September 2006.

52. China, proposal for Article V, ”Proposed Language Submitted to the Committee of the Whole,” BWC/CONF.VI/CRP.1, November 24, 2006, Paragraph 82.

53. Feakes and Pearson, ”Achieving the Outcomes,” pp. 41–43.

54. France, “EU Paper on the Enhancement of the CBM Process”; Switzerland, “Paper on Actions to Improve Confidence-Building Measures,” BWC/CONF.VI/WP.14, September 2006.

55. Guthrie, RevCon Report 15.

56. Final Document of the BWC Sixth Review Conference, Decisions and Recommendations, Paragraph 8 (vii).

57. Final Document of the BWC Sixth Review Conference, Decisions and Recommendations, Paragraphs 8(i)–(iii).

58. Final Document of the BWC Sixth Review Conference, Decisions and Recommendations, Paragraph 25.

59. Final Document of the BWC Sixth Review Conference, Decisions and Recommendations, Paragraph 9.

60. The UN Security Council adopted a further Resolution 1673, on April 27, 2006, which renewed the mandate of its “1540” Committee for a further two years and decided that the committee should intensify its efforts to promote full implementation of Resolution 1540.

61. Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay are the Latin American 12; JACKSNNZ (pronounced “Jacksons”) was an acronym formed from the initial letters of the names of seven non-EU, non-nuclear-weapon members of the Western Group: Japan, Australia, Canada, Korea (Republic of), Switzerland, Norway, and New Zealand.

62. Bulgaria and Romania (which were to become EU member states on January 1, 2007); Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Republic of Moldova, Serbia, Turkey, and Ukraine. Finland occupied the EU presidency for the second half of 2006, taking over the coordination role from Austria (EU president for the first half of 2006), which in turn had built on foundations laid by the United Kingdom (EU president for the second half of 2005).

63. Sims, “Diplomacy Still in the Doldrums,” pp. 8–16.

64. Lennane, “Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat,” p. 6.

65. United States, Statement by Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Proliferation John C. Rood, November 20, 2006.

66. Kofi Annan, “The Secretary-General: Remarks to the Sixth Review Conference of the Biological Weapons Convention,” November 20, 2006.

67. United Kingdom and France, “EU Paper on the Intersessional Program of Work,” Paragraph 13.

68. Sims, Evolution of Biological Disarmament, pp. 22, 191.

69. Canada, “Towards the Sixth BTWC Review Conference: An Accountability Framework.”

70. Piers D. Millett, “The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention in Context: from Monolith to Keystone,” UN Institute for Disarmament Research, Geneva, Disarmament Forum 2006/3 (September 2006), p. 59.