AAP
Diplomats
negotiating how to enforce a global ban on biological weapons are looking at Europe's
outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease as an example of what could happen if the threat
of germ warfare is not eliminated by the international community.
"It's
just a clear example of what it could mean in terms of havoc and economic impact,"
said Tibor Toth, the Hungarian diplomat in charge of multi-year talks to put teeth
into the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention.
"We cannot afford to fail."
The foot-and-mouth virus is one of the "agents" on a list of animal diseases
that would be covered by the treaty in addition to deadly human strains like the
ebola and anthrax.
A document proposed by Toth would set up an organisation
to enforce the treaty through a system of international visits to ensure industrial
and other facilities are not producing biological weapons.
As it stands,
the convention is little more than a pledge to refrain from developing or stockpiling
biological weapons. There is no method to prevent cheating.
Toth stressed
in an interview with The Associated Press yesterday that no one was suggesting
there had been a deliberate start to the cattle epidemic that began in Britain
earlier this year, but it showed that it would be easy to put such viruses to
hostile use.
He cited a recent editorial in the British journal New Scientist
that said the spread of foot-and-mouth disease demonstrated "that a tiny amount
of well-placed virus can send a country's farming and tourist industries reeling."
The magazine said that all that was needed was for "a lone fanatic" to
wipe a washcloth on the tongue of an infected cow in one country and seal the
cloth in a plastic bag until wringing it out in a drinking trough in a target
country.
Toth has been pushing the 143 nations that have ratified the
treaty to wind up seven years of talks this year by meeting their November 2001
target for signing the anti-cheating addition.
Last week he sought to
build momentum by presenting a 210-page compromise document. Since then about
80 per cent of the nations in the talks have signalled at least some support for
Toth's proposal, but the United States is among the countries that have yet to
react.
Diplomats say China, Iran, India and Pakistan are major countries
that appear to be watching to see what Washington will do.
In his speech
backing a national missile defence strategy on Tuesday, President George W Bush
referred to biological agents as a weapon of mass destruction that must be guarded
against, but he didn't signal what he would do about the convention.
An
enforcement mechanism was omitted when the treaty was created during the Cold
War because no one seriously thought anyone would try to use germ warfare. But
the 1991 Gulf War and subsequent discoveries of Iraq's arsenals revised thinking.
Negotiators speedily adopted a treaty in 1992 to ban chemical weapons,
but became bogged down on the biological weapons convention.
Even though
developments since the Gulf War have increased fears of germ warfare, the talks
that began in 1995 have dragged on because of problems such as how to provide
for inspection of small laboratories.
Toth said biological weapons posed
a greater risk than chemical or nuclear arms because they were simpler and cheaper
to make.
Japan's Aum Shinri Kyo cult nearly perfected biological weapons
and released batches eight times in downtown Tokyo, Toth said.
The cult
failed to cause infection because it produced the wrong size of agent. Those larger
or smaller than a couple of microns are ineffective, Toth said. But it would only
have been a matter of time until they succeeded, he said.
Toth conceded
that his proposal doesn't directly aim to stop bioterrorism, but he said it would
indirectly attack the problem by making governments responsible for what happens
on their territory.
He said his proposal eliminated some 1,400-plus points
of contention in previous drafts by using wording he thought was the best compromise.
He said he had written more than 500 pages to explain how he had arrived at his
decisions.
It could create a snowballing effect to approve the accord
by this summer, Toth said. |
