U.S. Offers to Renounce Use of Chemical Arms

In a sharp policy shift, the Bush Administration on Monday offered to renounce the use of chemical weapons and to destroy all its stockpiles if an international agreement to ban such weapons can be reached.

The proposal will be presented to the Conference on Disarmament today in Geneva, where it is intended to jump-start stalled negotiations. Although President Bush has made chemical warfare the centerpiece of his disarmament focus for years, there has previously been little progress.

The offer stirred considerable excitement among Washington’s chemical weapons experts, who said the pledge to never use such weapons, even in retaliation, represents a major shift in U.S. policy. As recently as the Persian Gulf War, Administration officials refused to say whether the United States would use chemical weapons against Iraq if Saddam Hussein’s military turned them on U.S. troops.

The proposal “can move the world significantly closer to the goal of a world free of chemical weapons,” Bush said in a written statement issued at the White House.

Reducing the world’s stock of weapons of mass destruction--chemical, nuclear and biological arms--has been a major emphasis for Bush. In the Middle East, for example, Administration officials for months have been discussing ideas for a possible arms control plan that would seek to bar all countries in the region from possessing chemical or nuclear weapons or ballistic missiles capable of delivering them long distances.

So far, however, those proposals have been stalled by opposition both from Israel, which is widely believed to have a nuclear weapons program, and the Arab states, many of which have stockpiled both chemical arms and ballistic missiles. The Administration “has a wish list, but we’re still not close to any announcements” on a Middle East plan, an Administration official said Monday.

On chemical arms, Bush until now had proposed retaining 2% of the nation’s poison gases and nerve agents as a hedge against a chemical attack. That approach had divided the 39-nation disarmament talks because it would have left the United States with at least 500 tons of chemical munitions even as other countries were eliminating their supplies.

The 2% proposal was “widely unpopular” among others at the Geneva conference, said a senior Administration official who was involved in preparation of the new policy. He spoke on the condition that he not be identified.

The official said that the Gulf War, which generated fears that U.S. and allied troops would come under a chemical attack for which they may not have been prepared, gave “a new urgency and, we think, a new opportunity” to reach an international agreement, known as the Chemical Weapons Convention. The goal is the global elimination of chemical weapons.

The “stark events” of the Persian Gulf War “renew and reinforce my conviction, shared by responsible leaders around the world, that chemical weapons must be banned, everywhere in the world,” Bush said in his statement.

In effect, the President’s proposal matches an offer made by the Soviet Union one day after Bush unveiled his previous plan at the United Nations on Sept. 25, 1989. At the time, the chief Soviet arms control negotiator, Viktor P. Karpov, said Moscow was prepared to eliminate “any amount that we agree on--even 100%.”

Calling for “an effective chemical weapons ban as soon as possible,” the President said: “We are formally forswearing the use of chemical weapons for any reason, including retaliation, against any state, effective when the convention enters into force, and will propose that all states follow suit.

“Further, the United States unconditionally commits itself to the destruction of all our stocks of chemical weapons within 10 years of (a completed treaty) and will propose that all other states do likewise,” he said.

Since 1984, Bush has placed himself at the forefront of the debate over chemical weapons disarmament. In Geneva that year, he introduced to the disarmament conference the Reagan Administration’s draft of a treaty that would have banned development, acquisition, production, stockpiling and transfer of chemical weapons. The Geneva talks have been under way for more than two decades.

With few if any signs of progress on the horizon, the Administration felt that a new inducement was needed to push the participants into an agreement.

“We have hopefully broken the back on a number of very key issues,” said one senior Administration official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

That assessment was echoed by Wayne Jaquith, a spokesman for the Council for a Livable World, a Boston-based organization that studies weapons issues. He said the Bush proposal represents “a major breakthrough that could clear the way for a Chemical Weapons Convention.”

In the proposal that will be presented in Geneva today, the Bush Administration will also:

* Urge that all outstanding issues be resolved by the end of 1991 and that the actual treaty be completed within one year.

* Recommend that the conference remain in session, without interruption, until the treaty is drawn up.

* Offer advice to other nations on the destruction of chemical weapons supplies.

In an effort to increase the pressure on others to join a total ban on chemical weapons, the United States will also propose a trade boycott intended to prohibit those nations not signing the treaty from obtaining chemical weapons materials.

The U.S. Chemical Arsenal

* SIZE: Estimates put it at about 70 million pounds. The exact size of the stockpile is classified.

* TYPES: Mustard gas and nerve agents VX and GB (also known as Sarin). Contained in tens of thousands of rockets, artillery shells and spray canisters.

* LOCATIONS: The weapons are currently stored at nine sites, eight Army depots in the United States (Anniston, Ala.; Pine Bluff, Ark.; Pueblo, Colo.; Newport, Ind.; Richmond, Ky.; Aberdeen, Md.; Umatilla, Ore. and Tooele, Utah) and at Johnston Atoll in the South Pacific. The atoll is site of the Army’s first operating incinerator for destroying chemical weapons.