(Hamburg and Austin, 11 May 2001) - Efforts to strengthen the
international ban on biological weapons are in grave danger of
collapse. Today, three weeks of negotiations in Geneva to develop a
Verification Protocol to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention
(BTWC) closed without any contribution from the US, an indication
that Washington has quietly withdrawn its support of the process. The
US delegation did not actively participate in the negotiations and -
with the exception of an insignificant statement during today´s final
session - never contributed a single word.


The silence is a de facto confirmation of recent press reports
indicating that the Bush Administration has decided to back away from
international biological weapons control, including a story in
Chemical & Engineering News stating that Washington prefers not to
draw attention to its negative stance after the global protests
against the US withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.


International protection against biological weapons - and six years
of diplomatic work - are at stake. Signed in 1975, the BTWC bans
biological weapons; but contains no means to verify that governments
are in compliance. In the 1990s, revelations came that Parties to the
BTWC (including Iraq and the former Soviet Union) violated the
Convention by developing offensive biological weapons. Responding to
this problem, in 1995 governments began to create a Verification
Protocol to make the BTWC enforceable for the first time ever. This
important process was scheduled to be completed this year.


Instead of triumph, 2001 may be the year the verification agreement
falls apart. Failure would signal that major powers are no longer in
agreement against biological weapons. "This could well be the
beginning of the end of the global ban on bioweapons" says Jan van
Aken of the Sunshine Project. "Failure might re-ignite some
countries' interest in weapons of mass destruction."


Previous US positions were problematic and diluted the proposed
Protocol's strengths; but according to the Sunshine Project's Edward
Hammond, "at least the Americans were engaged and hope could be held
out that they would ratify." The new US position is very different.
Says Hammond "The US knows that countries will be hesitant to open
their biotechnology facilities to mandatory inspections if the US
doesn't agree to do the same. So the US hopes that silence is all
that is necessary to kill the protocol."


In addition to the resounding hush in Geneva, there are other
indications that Washington has lost interest in a global ban on
biological weapons. In December, US military officers at a Edinburgh
(UK) conference called for renegotiation of the BTWC to allow some
so-called non-lethal biological weapons. Susana Pimiento of the
Sunshine Project points out that "The increasing interest in certain
biological weapons within the US military community is especially
frightening considering the Bush Administration's arrogant
unilateralism. The US has tossed the Verification Protocol on the
same funeral pyre as the Anti-Ballistic MissileTreaty and the Kyoto
Protocol."


The remaining negotiating parties in Geneva should press ahead and
build a strong Protocol without the many concessions made to the US
during recent years. "The world must not allow selfish interests to
poke a major hole in global peace and security. It must pressure the
US back into the Protocol, and into a strong one", says Hammond.