The US yesterday accused Iraq, North Korea and possibly Iran of violating an international treaty banning germ-warfare weapons and said Syria might also be able to produce biological weapons.
US Under-Secretary for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton said that Iraq had "developed, produced and stockpiled biological warfare agents and weapons" despite being a signatory of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention.
"We are also quite concerned about Iran, which the United States believes probably has produced and weaponized [made into weapons] agents in violation of the convention," he told a convention review conference in Geneva.
US officials said this weekend that Libya and Syria might be cited as well.
They said that Washington believes additional countries are also violating the treaty in secret, including some that are friendly with the US, but that the administration is not prepared to identify them.
The treaty dates back to 1972 and has been ratified by more than 140 countries, including the US.
The public nature of the accusations, in front of the delegates of the nations cited, is a departure in approach for the US government, although in the past the executive branch has leveled charges against individual governments in testimony before Congress and in State Department-promulgated investigative reports.
Bolton was also expected to accuse Osama bin Laden of trying to develop biological weapons. His text says that Washington is worried that bin Laden may have tried to acquire germ weapons "with support from a state," which Bolton does not identify.
The decision to "name names," as Bolton's speech puts it, is part of a new strategy to persuade countries to stop developing germ weapons by embarrassing suspected treaty cheaters.
"Prior to Sept. 11, some would have avoided this approach," states the speech Bolton was to give, a copy of which was provided to The New York Times. "The world has changed, however, and so must our business-as-usual approach."
The allegations are not specific, nor is the source of any evidence provided.
But they are intended to deflect criticism of the George W. Bush administration from those who say that it is Washington that has undermined the treaty, which it pioneered. Critics at home and abroad reproached the administration last summer for rejecting an agreement that was meant to strengthen compliance by establishing an inspection system.
While most other parties to the treaty overwhelmingly supported the so-called protocol, the administration rejected it, arguing that it would have undermined American bio-defense programs and given the world a false sense of security by failing to prevent cheating.
US officials said they hoped that the policy of accusing countries will focus public ire not on the US, but on the countries that have signed and ratified the treaty but are cheating on it. They also hope that the strategy will encourage countries to consider alternative measures that the US has proposed to strengthen the treaty and compliance.
Officials, historians and arms-control experts said the US has accused North Korea and 11 other states of cheating in annual reports filed by the State Department and in periodic testimony that administration officials have given on Capitol Hill. But they said this is the first time that the US has used an international gathering of treaty members to denounce alleged violators to their faces.
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