PRESS RELEASE

Just four days prior to the start of a meeting in Geneva to review a key biological weapons accord, a new report by an international arms control group recommends that creating bio-weapons should become an international crime, and governments should develop legal mechanisms to fight terrorist and state efforts to acquire and use these weapons of mass destruction.

Following the horrific events of Sept. 11 and the subsequent anthrax attacks in the United States, global concern over the risk of biological warfare and bio-terrorism is now greater than ever.  The Fifth Review Conference of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) will give countries the opportunity to construct an effective response.

BASIC’s latest research report: Disease by Design: De-mystifying the Biological Weapons Debate. analyses the true dangers of bio-weapons proliferation and use from terrorists and from state-sponsored weapons programs.

“Today we have the capability to develop and deploy disease by design,” said Michael Crowley, Senior Analyst and the report’s author. “Instead of eradicating these enemies of humankind, some countries have invested their resources and the skills of their scientists in attempts to produce even more deadly strains of such pathogens.”

The report recommends several key steps to strengthening the BTWC in an effort to combat bio-weapons proliferation:

• Continue work on the BTWC Protocol, the product of over six years of international negotiations.  The Bush administration favors scrapping the Protocol in favor of an approach that does not mandate compulsory on-site inspections of potential BW production sites;
  
  

• Develop a legal framework to ensure that breaches of the BTWC by individuals or groups are treated as international crimes;
  
  

• Maintain and stringently enforce the existing norm prohibiting possession of all bio-weapons.

“The time has come to give real teeth to the Convention.  This Review Conference is an opportunity that must not be squandered,” said Dr. Ian Davis, BASIC’s Director.

Read Disease by Design: De-mystifying the Biological Weapons Debate  Also available in .pdf format.

For further information, please contact 
Michael Crowley at +44 20 7407 2977 or mcrowley@basicint.org 

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