US negotiators at the UN in Geneva yesterday announced the US will not ratify a draft international protocol policing the spread of germ warfare capabilities, in a move that is likely to confirm to disappointed allies the go-it-alone tendency of this administration.
The 1972 Biological Weapons Convention bans the development, production and stockpiling of bacteriological weapons, and has been ratified by 143 countries, including the US. But it lacks a protocol on verification of implementation, a matter which has been under negotiation for more than six years.
"In our assessment, the draft protocol would put national security and confidential business information at risk," the US chief negotiator, Mr Donald A Mahley, told the conference yesterday. He said Washington still supported the treaty but believed it could strengthen the convention through other multilateral arrangements and "new, affirmative ideas".
"The protocol does not stop the threat posed by the spread of biological weapons, or deter cheaters, or enhance verification," the official said. But the protocol's requirement that states declare facilities in which weapons could be made and permit them to be inspected "does put our bio-defence activities and proprietary commercial interests at risk".
In essence the US is arguing that declaration and inspection requirements have no effect on rogue states which simply ignore them, while exposing the treaty-abiding to requirements which are thus one-sided, onerous, and potentially revealing state or commercial secrets. Inspections would cover factories producing so-called "precursor" chemicals or germs, and biological warfare defence test sites allowed for under the treaty - as the largest by far producer of precursor materials the US would find itself most targeted for inspections.
Ireland is a party to the convention and, like EU allies, strongly supports the protocol as a first, binding step that can be strengthened later. (Irish factories have been subject to some inspections under similar provisions in the chemical weapons convention.)
US officials insist that Iraq's success in developing biological weapons shows how toothless an inspection regime is and how easy it is to hide such developments. And they warn that Iran is currently involved in an undeclared biological weapons programme of its own. The latter's willingness to back the protocol, they say, also proves how worthless it is.
But the US repudiation of the protocol, however flawed, will be seen by allies as the confirmation of a deeply disturbing unilateralist trend. Since the election of President Bush the US has repudiated three major international agreements - the Kyoto Protocol, curbing emissions of greenhouse gases, an international pact to limit the trafficking of small arms, and now the protocol on biological weapons.
In addition the White House has announced its intention to let the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty wither and die unratified in the Senate, and its intention to repudiate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to allow Mr Bush to proceed with missile defence. In the latter case the US has said it would prefer to negotiate amendments with the Russians but will proceed if that is not possible.
But, "there is no basis for a claim that the United States does not support multilateral instruments for dealing with weapons of mass destruction and missile threats," Mr Mahley claimed to journalists yesterday. "To be valuable, however, we believe any approach must focus on effective, innovative measures."
Diplomatic sources have told the New York Times that the US alternative would consist in reliance on the informal 30-member Australia Group, consisting largely of allies in the developed world, to agree curbs on the international trade in precursors and the sophisticated technology needed to produce germ-warfare weapons. The US will submit proposals to allies shortly.
US officials said they would also endorse efforts by individual states to pass legislation and international treaties or conventions that make it a crime to buy, build, acquire or use a biological weapon for terrorist attacks.
In Geneva scientists and independent experts urged governments yesterday to ignore the opposition from the US and strike a deal on strengthening the treaty. "We are confident the protocol is the most effective international action available," Ms Barbara Rosenbourg of the Federation of American Scientists told journalists.