DSB/cisac-bw.1.85



	Towards preventing a biological weapons technology race.

	The BW convention, signed 1972, was a useful partial step
towards controlling biological and toxin weapons, notwithstanding
its well-understood limitations with respect to a) verification,
b) enforcement, and c) its inability to deal with weapons-related
R & D (as opposed to production and deployment).  Intrinsic to its
utility was an expectation that it would foster a climate of
mutually advantageous, cooperative verification and enforcement,
meeting the deeper interests of all sides.

	The convention has undoubtedly been helpful in forestalling
a major technology race in BW, compared e.g. to recent history in
cruise missiles.  However, the limitations have become involved in,
and perhaps now contribute to, other elements of international
competition.  The result today is a high degree of unmitigated
suspicion about actions and intentions of 'the other sides', with
grave consequences for 1) the credibility of arms control agreements
generally - especially those not manifestly verifiable by the grossest
of national means; and 2) the potentiality for fueling a major
technology race between the superpowers, within the letter if not the
spirit of the 1972 BW convention.  Since biological agents could be
manufactured in plants primarily designed for medical or industrial
purposes, and since we have the prospect of still newer and more
effective weapons-agents from biotechnology, the prospects of a
threatening 'breakout' in violation of the 1972 convention further
poison international harmony.

	Meanwhile, international security is more likely to be
threatened by the proliferation of BW capability to less responsible
powers; the nuclear superpowers have a marginal need, at most, for
BW atop their nuclear retaliatory capability.  The possibility of
regulating that proliferation is gravely impaired by the current
lack of cooperation in the enforcement of the BW convention.  The
irresponsibility just mentioned is aggravated by the likelihood that
biological weapons will spread infection from the targets under
attack, with potentially unlimited collateral damage, even
retroaction.

	It will not be easy to design formal procedures for a more
cooperative approach: the minimum that should be sought promptly is to
set up a bilateral forum (akin to the Standing Consultative
Commissions) where questions can be raised and pressed on matters that
are eliciting anxieties about compliance with the purposes of the BW
convention.  The treatment of the "Sverdlovsk case" is a counter
example: in the absence of a pre-agreed forum, it was given all
too much external publicity, allowing it to be regarded as a
"propaganda gambit".  The "answers" offered in print about the
"foodborne epidemic of intestinal anthrax" at Sverdlovsk were so
lacking in detail, they did not meet the minimum standards of a
scientific or public health report.  Above all there was no forum where
the matter could be pursued more fully by technically informed
experts.

	We face a similar situation today about allegations of
secret biotechnology research in the USSR.  Suspicions about this
are of course deepened by the holding of David Goldfarb on charges
that he was about to take national-security-related biological
specimens with him.

	As a first step, we should ask that the Soviet Academy
augment its CISAC delegation with scientists expert in the relevant
fields, and that we establish, jointly, an agenda to open up a
discussion about the matters that are raising so much suspicion.  We
can then undertake the very important practical task of developing
means to discourage the further proliferation of biological weaponry.