Chemical Arms Foes See Attack as Ammunition : Legislation: A global treaty banning toxic weapons has languished in the Senate. Its proponents view Tokyo incident as an argument for its passage.

Proponents of a worldwide ban on chemical weapons are seizing on the suffering in Tokyo’s subways as a persuasive argument for U.S. ratification of a treaty outlawing the manufacture of deadly gases and other chemical arms.

The treaty, known as the Chemical Weapons Convention, was signed by former President George Bush in January, 1993, during his final days in office, but it has languished since on a Senate shelf.

Until the terrorist strike this week against the Japanese subway system, the treaty’s prospects were uncertain. Democrats were unable to get it through Congress last year, and this year the Republican-controlled Senate Foreign Relations Committee has shown no interest in bringing it up for debate.

Some influential Washington insiders, however, say they believe that the dramatic videotape of commuters gasping for breath or dying in subway tunnels underneath Tokyo offers the United States a visceral argument for joining other nations in ending the manufacture of chemical weapons.

But Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee insisted that the treaty is for all practical purposes dead.

“This whole incident, what happened in Tokyo, just underscores the sheer uselessness of this agreement and how unverifiable it is,” one Republican source said.

“It’s a lot of nice talk and expresses a lot of nice sentiment, but let’s not fool ourselves that this will enforce anything. Our feeling over here is that the convention is not going to make it. It’s in trouble. And the reason simply is you can’t verify it,” the source said.

With such nations as Iraq and Libya--and even Japan--refusing to take part, the treaty’s advocates conceded that it would not prevent a Tokyo-style disaster. But they argued that it would send a clear signal to would-be terrorists or rogue nations that the civilized world would not sit helplessly by while such acts were committed.

“I would certainly hope in the United States that it will accelerate the ratification process,” said Michael Moodie, president of the Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute here.

“It’s not a panacea. But it is an additional political tool to deal with chemical weapons problems. And it is clear from this incident that in the future we are going to need all the tools we can get,” Moodie said.

A Democratic staff member on the Senate panel said that if the treaty was in effect, the companies from which terrorists obtain chemical components would come under severe penalties for allowing the materials to leave their hands.

“If it’s somebody in a garage mixing up some crazy thing, in the end you’re only going to get him for murder,” said the staff member, who asked not to be identified. “But when authorities find out where he got his materials, it could be very bad consequences for the companies he got them from.”

It is believed that the nerve gas sarin was used in the Tokyo attack. Sarin is made with common industrial chemicals used, for example, in the production of ink for ballpoint pens and of fertilizers.

Serious negotiations for a chemical weapons ban began in 1968. But the Persian Gulf War and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s threat to use chemical warfare in that conflict pushed the issue to the forefront.

President Clinton sent the treaty to the Senate in November, 1993; some hearings were conducted, but the treaty was trapped in a legislative bottleneck at the end of the session and never made it to the Senate floor. Since the GOP won the Senate, there has been no action.

Other Republican objections are that it would be difficult to manage, too intrusive and too costly for many U.S. industries. About 20,000 chemical manufacturing plants are located in the United States, representing about a third of the world’s total production.

Only 35 of the 65 nations interested in the treaty have ratified the convention, Moodie said. But he said he expects that most of them, including the United States, will be on board a year from now.

But detractors insist that the terrorist attack in Tokyo does not belong in a debate over governments developing chemical weapons. And they argue that international terrorists would simply scoff at rules from the governments they conspire to bring down.

“Would it have any impact on another Tokyo incident?” asked retired Rear Adm. Eugene Carroll, deputy director of the Center for Defense Information here. “None. Zero. Zilch.”