Germ, Chemical Arms Reported Proliferating

Despite a flurry of positive steps on the diplomatic front, military interest in chemical and biological weapons appears to be reviving, and substantial holes have developed in the patchwork of agreements and international taboos that shielded the world from these dreaded weapons for more than 50 years.

Indeed, the United States itself--while pressing for comprehensive bans on production as well as use of such weapons--is moving toward resuming production of chemical munitions for the first time in 17 years. The Administration contends that the existing stockpile is deteriorating and unsafe and thus needs to be replaced.

“There have been some positive developments in the past year,” said a key U.S. negotiator, “but the bad news more than outweighs the good.”

U.S. arms officials, hoping for progress in negotiating new curbs, note that Mikhail S. Gorbachev “has said more about controlling chemical weapons than any other Soviet chief,” as one Administration official put it. Also, alleged Soviet violations of the existing ban on using chemical and biological weapons appear to have stopped, or at least to have been sufficiently reduced that the United States has not repeated the charges since 1984.

And the toll from the 1984 insecticide leak in Bhopal, India--now estimated at 3,000 deaths and 210,000 persons partially disabled--has given the world a terrifying glimpse of the consequences that modern chemical toxins can inflict even through accidental release.

Amid these hopeful signs, however, evidence has been accumulating that chemical and biological weapons--sometimes called “the poor man’s atomic bombs”--have proliferated and that the international taboo against their use has eroded. Also, genetic engineering has the potential to produce tailor-made germs that could reduce some of the tactical disadvantages long associated with biological weapons and thus make them more tempting to use.

Sixteen nations, 11 of them outside the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, now have chemical weapons, compared to five in the 1950s, according to Pentagon and State Department officials. Among the surprising new possessors is Romania, which has been producing its own chemical weapons.

And British news reports have claimed that mustard gas munitions made in Argentina were found in the Falkland Islands after the brief war in 1982.

Two more nations, Iran and Libya, are attempting to acquire the capability to manufacture these arms, officials said, noting that any country with a modern chemical industry can convert today’s pesticides and fertilizers into such weapons relatively easily.

Miniature Laboratory

Also, Paris police who raided the hideout of terrorists of the West German Red Army Faction in November, 1980, discovered a miniature laboratory intended to develop the culture of the bacteria which causes botulism, and there have been unconfirmed reports that Palestinians have trained German terrorists in the use of bacteriological substances, according to Brian Jenkins, a Rand Corp. expert on terrorism.

Jenkins fears the world faces the prospect of chemical and biological terror in both the near and longer term. The wave of product contamination--manifested here by the poisoning of Tylenol capsules, food and water--is taking on political motivations, he said, citing recent threats abroad to poison Ceylon tea from Sri Lanka and fruit from South Africa, as well as threats to contaminate some candy bars to protest the use of animals in lab tests by the candy manufacturer.

Moreover, the use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq War raises the unsettling possibility of Mideast terrorists acquiring such weapons from radical Arab states. “Over the next 10 or 15 years, as chemical weapons are acquired by unstable nations, you can’t dismiss the possibility of their use by terrorists,” Jenkins said.

The breakdown in recent years of the international taboo that has kept chemical weapons from being used for five decades is probably the most ominous of the “bad news.”

International Agreements

Two international agreements limit these weapons to different degrees. The 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibits the use (but not the production or stockpiling) of chemical weapons, and the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention bans the development, production, stockpiling and use of microbes or their poisonous products except in amounts necessary for protective and peaceful research.

The United States has accused the Soviet Union and its allies of using nerve gases and poisonous “yellow rain” in Afghanistan, Cambodia and Laos for several years. Since 1984, the level of activity has decreased, but “the Soviet activity did degrade the norms against use of chemical weapons,” according to Ralph A. Hallenbeck, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for arms control.

Subsequent to the alleged Soviet violations, Iraq has employed mustard gas against Iran in their long war, and Ethiopia has reportedly attacked Eritrean rebels with chemical agents.

Genetic engineering, in which genes are spliced from one organism into another to produce a new hybrid organism, may now be able to surmount drawbacks that have rendered biological weapons ineffective in the past--namely, the inability of such microbes to distinguish between friend and foe.

Increased Military Appeal

It is now theoretically possible, for example, to design a poisonous organism and at the same time devise vaccines and antidotes to it. The toxic microbe could then be loosed against an enemy after friendly forces had been protected by vaccines. Biological poisons can also be made that are faster acting, less sensitive to weather and quicker to dissipate so that territory where the agents are used can be occupied sooner--all of which increases their military appeal.

One possible scenario for Soviet use of such biological arms would be against the European civilians who maintain U.S. tanks and guns now stationed on the continent. A debilitating illness would prevent airlifted U.S. troops from effectively marrying up with those arms. Unlike the use of conventional or nuclear weapons, it would be unclear for some crucial period of time that the sicknesses represented the start of hostilities.

The Soviets allegedly stockpile biological weapons despite the existing ban--blatantly ignoring it, according to defectors. A 1979 outbreak of anthrax in Sverdlovsk near a plant believed to produce such weapons, as well as the “yellow rain” toxins used in Southeast Asia by Soviet allies, are cited as proof by Reagan Administration officials.

Soviet interest in the genetic engineering of biological weapons is also alleged. “The military applications of new biotechnology developments” are being studied by the Soviets, according to the Pentagon’s 1984 booklet on Soviet military power.

Soviet Research

“The Soviets are also performing genetic engineering research with applications . . . for improving the effectiveness of disease-causing biological warfare agents,” it added.

The United States has forsworn biological weapons but has reserved the right to conduct “defensive research” on the efficacy of protective measures, according to an Army spokesman. The distinction between defensive and offensive research is difficult to make, a State Department official acknowledged.

Last year, after repeated refusals, Congress voted to permit resumption of the manufacture of two types of nerve gases, to be delivered by artillery shells and bombs, as “binary” munitions. The gases, which are not classified as biological and therefore may be produced under existing agreements, are made by mixing two chemicals, which are kept separated until the shells are fired or the bombs dropped.

The Administration claimed that the present U.S. stockpile of 100,000 shells filled with chemical munitions (of the same two nerve gases) are 20 years old, dangerously deteriorated and inherently less safe than the binary weapons.

Congressional Strings

Congress acted on the Administration’s request only reluctantly. And it attached many strings last year when it approved $1.1 billion for resuming chemical arms production after Oct. 1, 1986. These included a requirement that NATO approve a U.S. “force goal,” or plan, to make the new binary weapons, and that President Reagan certify that contingency plans for deploying the weapons to Europe be worked out.

Despite strong objections from some smaller nations, NATO leaders this month acted to approve the necessary “force goal,” thereby paving the way for Reagan’s certification. Manufacture of the chemicals should thus start after Oct. 1, with their incorporation into the shells and bombs expected to begin one year later.

Moscow, meanwhile, began showing increased interest in a new chemical arms ban last year. Until then, a U.S. draft treaty submitted in 1980 had languished in the United Nations’ 40-member Committee on Disarmament. It had proposed barring manufacture and stockpiling, as well as use, of such munitions, and included strict verification provisions, including on-site inspection.

In March, U.S. and Soviet experts met to discuss the need for better export controls on substances that can be made into chemical weapons. At the U.N. forum, progress was made on how chemical munitions plants would be dismantled after a new treaty is negotiated.

But Arms Control and Disarmament Agency officials complain that these moves, while useful, represent little significant progress toward a verifiable treaty that bans production and stockpiling of chemical weapons.

“We’re hoping it will come in the next round of the talks, which begins in June, but verification is still the biggest problem,” one official said.