TUESDAY 11 APRIL 2000

PROFESSOR MALCOLM DANDO, PROFESSOR GRAHAM S. PEARSON AND DR TOM INCH

  94. Gentlemen, welcome to the Committee. Before the Committee today we have Professor Malcolm Dando from the Department of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford; also from Bradford we have Professor Graham Pearson, who is Visiting Professor of International Security; and Dr Tom Inch of the Royal Society of Chemistry. We have received a large number of memoranda on the broad subject of the NPT in relation to chemical and biological weapons. This morning we wish to concentrate on the chemical and biological area. A previous witness, Sir Michael Quinlan, argued that nuclear weapons provide "a salutary underpinning to the biological weapons and chemical weapons prohibitions—those prohibitions cannot be perfectly verified, and overtrumping capability in the hands of key powers is a last-resort deterrent to breaches and reassurance to good-faith parties". Can you comment on his assertion that effectively the continued existence of nuclear weapons provides a necessary underpinning of the prohibitions in the chemical and biological areas because of the much greater difficulties of verifying breaches in respect of the other two areas?

  (Professor Pearson) For some time, I have advocated a concept of what I now call a web of reassurance—it used to be a web of deterrence—as an approach for how to counter the threat of chemical and biological weapons. I see four key elements: firstly, complete prohibition, such as in arms control; secondly, effective controls nationally and internationally; thirdly, effective protective measures to reduce the utility of either chemical or biological weapons; and, fourthly, for determined national and international responses to either use or the threat of use. I believe that one needs all of those elements in order to be effective in countering such weapons. If you have only one aspect it is too easy to cheat—

  95. Even with all those controls, will it seriously be effective and will it meet the problems raised by Sir Michael Quinlan?
  (Professor Pearson) I was coming to your point about the nuclear underpinning. I believe that it comes down to determination, to a determined response nationally and internationally, which comes down to political will, as to whether the United Nations, or a coalition of states, whether NATO or an individual state, feel that they need to take the ultimate step. Personally I would not necessarily argue for nuclear weapons having to be linked to this ultimate prohibition. One of the great successes in the Gulf conflict of 1991 was the deliberate blurring of precisely what would happen were Saddam Hussein to use chemical or biological weapons. It is clear that both the US and the UK sent out that message. The more that you are able to leave uncertainty in the mind of the would-be cheater, the would-be acquirer of chemical and biological weapons, the more he will be deterred in that sense. I do not see the strong linkage. I also see the problem—this is getting into a broader area—of under which circumstances would you consider that you have sufficiently compelling evidence to order a nuclear strike and against whom? A nuclear strike, like biological weapons, will be indiscriminate and will not simply take out the military but it will take out people as well. I am well aware of the International Court of Justice ruling about nuclear weapons.

  96. Advisory opinion.
  (Professor Pearson) And where that will lead us. I think they are making it more difficult to get an international consensus to take nuclear action. That is why I would certainly have it up there as part of your unstated possibility of retaliation of a sort that will not be very nice for whoever has gone down the road of getting chemical and biological weapons. I would argue for that.

  97. Is it useful to have in the background, Professor Dando?
  (Professor Dando) I think it is probably common ground among almost all of us that it is very difficult to imagine circumstances in which nuclear weapons could be used without causing unnecessary suffering. So we are down to whether nuclear deterrency is effective. My view is that as the history of the Cold War becomes clearer, we shall understand that nuclear deterrents were much more unstable than we understand at the present time. Personally, I believe that nuclear weapons proliferation will continue into the next century. I think that instability will also become more obvious; for instance, the recent nuclearisation of India and Pakistan gives us an indication of the kind of problems that we shall encounter in the next century. I do not think that this kind of process can go on without us getting nuclear use. To my mind the problem of weapons of mass destruction is the same for all. We have to find international legal mechanisms of minimising the numbers and extent of the programmes. In that regard, we have to accept that there is no such thing as perfect verification for any of them. We are dealing with degrees of verification capabilities. In that regard I would not accept Sir Michael's view that there is a complete and utter difference between verification in regard to nuclear weapons and verification in regard to biological weapons. I think that we can achieve an adequate form of verification in regard to biological weapons, and that that is one thing we should press for as hard as we possibly can at the present time.

  Sir John Stanley: Could our witnesses tell us, as specifically as possible, what steps they believe that the British Government can usefully take to ensure comprehensive adherence to the terms of the Chemical Weapons Convention and the specific steps that the British Government can take to try to ensure that the goal of the elimination of the manufacture of chemical weapons and the removal of existing chemical weapons stocks is achieved worldwide?

  98. Dr Inch, I believe you have been involved in that?
  (Dr Inch) Yes. We have quite a good treaty, at least on paper. The British authorities have been exemplary in the way in which they have tried to follow through on implementation of that treaty, working closely with industry as well as the defence departments to make sure that the necessary inspections and reporting mechanisms are in place. I believe that among all countries we lead in the steps that we have taken to be effective. The real issue, however, with the convention is that it is a mechanism for law-abiding countries to report what they are doing. It does not have very good mechanisms—at least not tried and tested—for checking of those who may be inclined to cheat on the promises under the convention. As yet, within the convention, there is none of the really telling challenge inspections that may be necessary to demonstrate that there is international will to enforce the treaty in all its aspects. In my view, one of the weaknesses of the Chemical Weapons Convention—although it is a strength in another sense—is that it concentrates on what, for the purpose of this discussion, I shall call traditional chemical warfare agents; nerve agents, mustard gas and things like that. Most of the inspection procedures and declaration procedures in place for international inspection are actually confined to those particular chemicals. Within the treaty there is a general purpose criteria which is intended, and the intent is very much to pull in other toxic chemicals that may be used. The real difficulty there is, what are they? What do you look for and what should the international inspectors look for? When one moves into the general purpose criteria of the convention, as far as I can see, the onus is very much on the national authority to make sure that within the country's own boundaries everyone in the country is sticking rigidly to that convention. The reason that it has to be a national authority is that there are matters of national security and commercial confidentiality that have to be taken into account. That is where the difficulties arise. Are all national authorities equally committed, with the full backing of their governments, to ensure that they implement the criteria of the convention? Unfortunately, particularly in one instance in regard to the United States, on inspection procedures we have seen attitudes taken that do not demonstrate that that political will is paramount.

  99. Could you elaborate on the specific instance to which you refer?
  (Dr Inch) There is a clause in terms of the ability to take samples from a country for analysis to verify what is happening. The United States has refused to allow samples to be taken from US territory for that purpose. Those are the kinds of problems that come up. The strengths of the convention and the Chemical Weapons Act in this country are quite apparent. We have had a lot of declarations. The intention was to build a lot of confidence and that has happened. We have had a lot of declarations of old stocks, and not-so-old stocks. In fact, some of the stocks are probably past their sell-by-date, but others were very useful in certain countries. We had some surprises. There are lots of good discussions going on about how to dispose of old stocks. That is not a trivial issue when, in relation to some countries, we are talking about millions of rounds of stocks that need to be destroyed. There is collaboration and co-operation on those issues. The key point that I make is that all these things are there to encourage the countries who have signed and that want to stick to the letter of the convention to do so. However, at the moment, they are not providing enough challenge to those countries where there is doubt. If I wanted to make chemical weapons I would not do it in an industrial complex that I thought was going to be inspected. I would take them somewhere else. There are other advances in technology that we shall have to take into account.