Defense Environment Alert
May 20, 2003

NGO INITIATES PUBLIC DISCUSSION ON AMENDING CHEMICAL TREATY BEYOND 2012

For the first time, delegates to an international body that oversees the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) publicly discussed the probable need to amend the CWC in light of the fact that the United States and Russia are expected to miss a final deadline for destroying their massive quantities of stockpiled chemical weapons.

While it has long been known the United States and Russia will likely miss deadline requirements in the CWC the international treaty that governs the destruction of chemical weapons stockpiles -- no one had publicly broached the sensitive issue prior to the First Review Conference of the CWC, held five years after the treaty went into effect, according to an expert on the issue.

In an open forum held May 1 at the meeting in The Hague, the Netherlands, Paul Walker, legacy program director for the environmental organization Global Green USA, told parties to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) they should start thinking about the mechanism to extend the final deadline in the treaty beyond 2012. He gave a presentation on the United States' destruction program, noting that the U.S. government is not expected to meet the 45 percent and 100 percent destruction deadlines in the current treaty, and will likely complete full destruction sometime between 2012 and 2015. Russia, the other party with a major stockpile, is much further behind the United States in its destruction schedule and has just recently destroyed I percent of its stockpile, three years beyond the treaty's originally stipulated deadline.

The CWC requires 100 percent of the parties' stockpiled chemical weapons to be destroyed by 2007. Beyond that, it allows the OPCW to approve an additional five-year extension to that deadline, which both Russia and the United States have said they will need. But the treaty currently does not allow for any further extensions so both parties would be in violation if they miss the 2012 extended deadline.

The OPCW would likely use an amendment to the convention to extend the treaty deadline, Walker said in an interview. It will have to take into consideration that Russia will need a longer extension than the United States, he said. Nonetheless, OPCW should continue to press Russia and the United States to destroy as much as possible within the existing framework, he said.

The challenge will be in 2012, the United States when will need to provide continued long-term support for Russia's destruction program if Russia is going to be anywhere close to the 2012 deadline, he said in the interview. The United States last year, in the Fiscal Year 2003 Defense Appropriations Act, lifted a bar to funding Russia's chemical weapons destruction program. The bar had held up new U.S. funding for a few years because certification requirements regarding full disclosure of the Russian stockpile had gone unmet. Congress temporarily waived those requirements.

Walker said he believes some delegates to the OPCW were happy to hear his statements, particularly the Russians, because it signaled the two were together in their need to go beyond 2012. But others were upset that the United States has not progressed as much this year as was predicted, with delays at various chemical incineration facilities throughout the country.