FEATURE Chemical weapons: the quest for a ban “Pentagon paid outside contractors” ato By RICHARD CLEMENTS On Feb. 12, a New York Times report, datelined Feb. 11, stated: “The United ¥ States today dismissed a proposal by Mik- hail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, for an interim agreement barring the spread of chemical weapons. The proposal, put for- ward Jan. 15, had been characterized by the Soviet Union as a preliminary step toward a formal treaty banning production, storage and use of chemical weapons.” In rejecting the Soviet offer, Donald Lowitz, chief of the U.S. delegation attend- ing the 40-nation Conference on Disarma- ment meeting in Geneva, said “the United States remained committed to ‘mandatory, short-notice challenge inspection’ of chemi- cal weapons production and storage sites as stated in the draft (U.S.) treaty presented to the conference by Vice-President George Bush in 1984.” By continuing to insist on such intrusive inspection procedures the U.S. was, of course, once again forestalling any possible joint U.S.-Soviet progress toward a chemi- cal weapons agreement. The U.S. position, however, is hardly new. Since 1981, against stiff Congressional opposition, the Reagan administration has been urging an end to the 1969 unilateral moratorium imposed on the manufacture of new chemical weapons by the U.S. This important and positive dent Richard Nixon. While the Reagan administration has been busy lobbying heavily for a resump- tion of the U.S. chemical weapons program it has also repeatedly charged the Soviets with supposed chemical weapons use in Afghanistan, and has accused Vietnam and Laos, Soviet allies, of using an alleged chem- ical weapon called “yellow rain” in South East Asia. Both the “mandatory” inspection issue and the question of chemical weapons use by the Soviet Union and its South East Asian allies can only be viewed as a cynical effort by the Reagan administration to undermine serious negotiations on the growing problem of chemical weapons, while presenting the appearance of good- faith bargaining in the face of pronounced public and official concern over chemical weapons proliferation and use. An interna- tional conference on chemical weapons held in Belgium in 1984, for example, drew a record of 250 scientists, analysts and mil- itary officials from 28 countries, in part because of the documented use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war, but also because the estimated volume for protective chemical weapons equipment contracts offered by governments had tripled or quadrupled between 1979-84. To assuage this growing world wide apprehension about chemical weapons the Reagan administration made an apparent “sweeping” proposal in April, 1984 to the international Geneva disarmament confer- ence. This proposal, put forward by Vice- President Bush, is the one that the chief U.S. delegate Donald Lowitz now insists that the US. is sticking to. As outlined by the vice- president, the key U.S. provision provided that each party to the agreement “accept, at _ 24 hours’ notice, a special inspection per- mitting ‘unimpeded access’ to any facility owned or controlled by the government of a party, including military installations.” With this provision, which went further than any other arms control measure of recent years, the U.S. was trying to hold forth the prdspect of a guaranteed fail-safe compliance, while simultaneously establish- ing a gaping loophole which worked to the benefit of the U.S. Since all chemical wea- pons production facilities in the Soviet Union are state-owned, they would all be subject to the mandatory 24-hour notice of inspection. But in the United States, nearly all chemical agents are manufactured by private corporations working under defence contract. According to the U.S. proposal these privately-owned chemical production 14 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, APRIL 23, 1986 American initiative was taken by the presi- 1982 NOVOSTI PRESS PAMPHLET. . .Soviet Union still pressing for chemical weapons agreement. facilities would be exempt from the manda- tory inspection rule. The blatant inequality of this U.S. prop- osal was rightly skewered by William Epstein, a senior special fellow of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research who specializes in disarmament issues, and who was the Canadian UN ambassador from 1978 through 1982. Noting that the Soviets had rejected the “one-sided verifica- tion” offer made by the U.S., he stated in an article in the Globe and Mail July 2, 1984: “Not only was it clear that the Soviet Union would reject such free-wheeling verification as a means of gathering military intelli- gence, it is doubtful whether even the Uni- ted States or its industrialized allies would be willing to accept it for fear of industrial espionage. This may have been why the U.S. proposal called for international inspection only of ‘all military or govern- 1984 chemical weapons proposal at the multilateral Geneva disarmament confer- ence, broke a Senate tie vote on resuming nerve gas production by voting in favor. In a subsequent Senate vote on the issue held the following November the vice-president broke another deadlock by again voting for nerve gas production. The U.S. House of Representatives did vote in May, 1984, “against the Pentagon’s proposed $95-million purchase of compo- nents for nerve gas bombs and shells,” on the basis of an earlier released Congres- sional report on the subject. The report, researched by the Congresssional Research Service, charged that, among other things, the new chemical weapons “‘sought by the Reagan administration (would) be less effi- cient as weapons and more conducive to arms proliferation and terrorist use than existing type.” East, West German accord shows agreement possible if United States willing. ment-owned or government-controlled fac- ilities,’ but not of privately owned industrial companies.” He added, “The credibility of the latest U.S. proposal will also be regarded with suspicion as long as the United States keeps wanting to produce ‘binary’ chemical wea- pons. These combine two harmless chemi- cal agents in flight to make deadly nerve gases. If produced, they would make the extraordinarily difficult problem of verifica- tion practically impossible. If the United States proceeds with these binary weapons, so too will the Soviet Union.” The Reagan administration, in alliance with the U.S. chemical industry and the Pentagon, has since managed to get Con- ’ gressional approval to override the 1969 unilateral U.S. moratorium on the produc- tion of new chemical weapons including binary nerve gases. In July, 1983, Vice- President Bush, who presented the U.S. But Congressional resistance to the nerve gas program was finally worn down. In June 1985, the House voted to authorize the nerve gas program but said that “no money could be spent until October, 1987, to allow time to negotiate an agreement on chemical weapons with the Soviet Union.” As part of its intensive lobbying effort in ‘Congress the Reagan administration had appointed a supposedly “independent” panel which recommended in favor of nerve gas production. In May, 1985, Walter J. Stoessel Jr., who headed Reagan’s Chemi- cal Warfare Review Commission, was forced by a barrage of Congressional criti- cism to acknowledge that “‘there were no known opponents of chemical weapons among the panel’s eight members and that, at the president’s order, all staff members had been provided by the Pentagon along with a budget of $174,000.” : Subsequently it was learned that the of “about $890,000 for (the) chemical Wa) ‘fare studies at (the) time when the mill?) was trying to persuade Congress to aut rize the production of modern chem) weapons.” Noting that it is “illegal for the Pent to use public funds to influence Congt Thoms & the New York Times reported that J. Welch, deputy assistant for weapons to Secretary of Defence Weinberger, nevertheless “agreed ! the resulting (Pentagon-sponsored) sf ) had been used by the Reagan administ tion in prodding Congress to approv’ production of chemical weapons.” With the House of Representatives sf : port for delayed funding of a U.S. che: chem i 1 7 weapons program safely in its pockels” Reagan administration again aired cha d accusing the Soviet Union and its allies using chemical weapons. The adml tion also claimed that the new wea! were needed both as a “deterrent” and arms control bargaining lever Soviets. Last August, the director of wit the Arms Control and Disarmament Ag (ACDA), Kenneth Adelman — the ® ly esta lished in order to act as a counterwel of an agency which was original the Pentagon — claimed: “Over decade, Soviet surrogates, Laotial Vietnamese forces, have used lethal cal and toxic weapons (yellow rain) in East Asia. More recently, Soviet f themselves have, we believe, used weapons in Afghanistan,” he told York Times. The ACDA director’s charges 40%) che ‘he Fl chemical-weapons used by the Soviet U! in Afghanistan and by Soviet allies i>" East Asia had been refuted long befor’ May 15, 1984, the New York Times repo") | +) el TH in a lengthy article on the subject: | (U.S.) government...has quietly pack? away from some of the preliminary 18%" tory evidence it once cited to demons”” that yellow rain (an alleged toxic agenY being used in Afghanistan. This chatg® rests on a single piece of physical evide?? gas mask obtained from undisclo ces near Kabul, which was found t0 poison on its surface. Another gas and a sample of vegetation that were thought to contain toxic chemicals out to be false alarms, accordit?, government officials.” Without citin8 new evidence regarding alleged Soviet ding chemical weapons in Afghanistan, “ man, nevertheless, reiterated these © dited charges on behalf of the R administration. 3 The charge that “yellow rain” was employed by Vietnamese and Lao ces was exploded by Matthew Mesels® world-renowned U.S. molecular biol? It is true, however, that there are mate difficulties with verifying any senior researcher at the Stockholm the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists che! weapons agreement. Jozef Goldbl# tional Peace Research Institute, obs¢ in 4 1985: “Under a verification system has already been broadly accepted 4§ prising both human and automatic toring, large-scale violations inv militarily relevant quantities of ch d ol eC) weapons in readily usable form cO remain undetected, even without the F inspections proposed by the United S# “On the other hand,” he added, “om amounts of chemicals, which may reptitiously retained, would have to be den in remote places to escape detect! f could not be important enough to S° 44 upset a balance of forces.” He com ds “An element of uncertainty is un@ in any arms control treaty. But yo! incurred should be weighed: first, 9” treaty violations on the national se¢ parties. On both counts, a chemi cal see GERMAN page 15 © #, ve ft