Bush Seeks Broader, Tougher Germ Treaty

Declaring that the threat posed by germ warfare and terrorism “is real and extremely dangerous,” President Bush opened a campaign Thursday to strengthen and expand the provisions of a 1972 treaty banning biological weapons.

His proposal would extend many of the treaty’s terms to the criminal level, taking the treaty from a government-to-government pact regulating actions by countries to one also encompassing the behavior of individuals.

The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, which 144 nations have ratified, bans the development, production and possession of all biological weapons. But “the source of biological weapons has not been eradicated,” Bush said. “Instead, the threat is growing.”

In a statement seemingly linking the outbreak of anthrax cases in the United States to the terrorist hijackings, Bush added: “Since Sept. 11, America and others have been confronted by the evils these weapons can inflict. This threat is real and extremely dangerous. Rogue states and terrorists possess these weapons and are willing to use them.”

Bush and some senior administration officials have said they would not be surprised if Osama bin Laden, who they say is responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, has also had a hand in the spread of anthrax. But the FBI says it has found nothing that connects the leader of the Al Qaeda terrorist network to the germs.

The president proposed that the treaty participants:

* Enact “strict criminal legislation” prohibiting biological warfare activities;

* Bring the United Nations into investigations of suspicious outbreaks or allegations of biological weapon use;

* Establish a code of ethical conduct to guide the work of bioscientists;

* Commit to improving international efforts at controlling disease and to enhancing procedures to speed response teams to sites of disease outbreaks; and

* Establish mechanisms in each country to oversee the security and genetic engineering of pathogenic organisms.

Signatories to the treaty are scheduled to meet in Geneva for three weeks beginning Nov. 19. Treaty review sessions are held regularly every five years.

If accepted by the other nations, the administration’s plan would redefine the pact to take into consideration global geopolitical changes, such as the increased fear of bioterrorism, that have occurred over the last three decades. But it would not, Bush conceded, offer “a complete solution to the use of pathogens and biotechnology for evil purposes.”

Although given a new timeliness by the terrorist attacks and the mysterious spread of anthrax, the president’s announcement reflects the latest twist in a seven-year effort to modernize the treaty.

In July, the Bush administration rejected a proposal, supported by the United Nations and a number of the other signatories, that would have created an international organization to conduct inspections of plants in which biological weapons could be made. The administration argued that the inspections would have been too intrusive and would have put at risk the proprietary information of American pharmaceutical companies and other private businesses that work with biological agents. U.S. officials also felt that the enforcement procedures, though stronger, would still have been too weak to spot cheaters.

They argued too that it would have given a veneer of respectability to nations, such as Iran, that Washington asserted were pursuing biological weapon programs while indicating that they would sign the proposal, known officially as a protocol.

And even as the administration was rejecting that plan, it forecast that a biological attack by rogue states or terrorist groups was the premier threat of the 21st century.

“We just thought that the particular protocol that was being discussed was not addressing the problems that biological weapons pose,” White House National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said Thursday. The administration therefore began developing the new proposals, she said.

“We now think that if we can move toward a system of strengthening the convention that focuses on criminal activity and underground activity . . . that that’s really what we want to do.”

She said under the administration’s plan, individual countries would be “responsible for dealing with scientists and others who might engage” in production of germ weapons.

“We want to have strong national oversight mechanisms,” she said.

The White House plan shifts the approach to countering germ warfare from the conventional, narrow arms-control approach to a broader reach that regulates the handling of biological agents in each country, said Michael Moody, an arms control negotiator during the administration of the first President Bush.

Its outcome is uncertain, he said.

In the past, said Moody, president of the Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute, a Washington-based policy research group, “there has been a reluctance on the part of other countries to agree to criminalization” of certain work with biological agents.