BEIJING PRESENTATION

PURPOSE OF PRESENTATION

  • Meeting at WP September – Prospects for the 2011 BTWC Review Conference.
  • The aim was to bring together a range of highly-experienced experts and policymakers to hold focused discussions on what might realistically be achieved at the Review.
  • We had a total of 61 people from 22 countries and 4 institutions.
  • Had all P5 states there
  • From Europe, Belgium, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Switzerland.
  • From NAM – Brazil, Cuba, Philippines, South Africa
  • Also, Canada, Japan, Mexico, Pakistan, EU, ISU, OPCW

[UNABLE: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, India, Indonesia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Republic of Korea, Russia, South Africa, Sweden.]

SUBSTANCE OF THE PROGRAMME

  • We began with an assessment of progress since the 2006 RC.
  • Remember atmosphere when I began at WP.
  • The 2006 RC was regarded as having rebuilt and revitalised the consensus within the regime. The chairmanship of Ambassador Khan, coupled with a powerful sense that the BTWC might be on the point of collapse, saw the regime through this crisis.
  • We discussed the 2011 RC, and the possible definitions of success there, which I will come back to in a minute.
  • The programme was structured to move in steps from debate about how to develop existing institutions and structures, to how to make further steps, and then how to grasp really difficult issues such as verification.
  1. Next looked at ways to build upon what we have. Specific issues for debate were an assessment of what needs to be done on
  2. national implementation and CBMs.
  3. the future of the intersessional process
  4. and the Implementation Support Unit.
  5. Next we looked at the prospects and challenges of going further.
  6. We discussed how to develop strategies for improving engagement with the scientific community,
  7. how to develop the role of industry in BTWC implementation,
  8. and how to implement Article X. After a discussion of the difficult issues surrounding verification and compliance, and responses to alleged or suspected BW use, the conference moved into its concluding session.

CONCLUSIONS

  1. Continuing move from technology-based threats to knowledge-based risks.
  2. Atmosphere – none of the real apprehension that I saw in 2006 when I started at WP. Sense then that the future of the BTWC was on the line. It might exist, but its future as a way to organise an international constituency and international consensus on biological weapons would be bleak.
  3. Clear consensus on the topics that would be decisive at the RC, in the sense that they would define the shape of the outcome.
  4. The decisive topics were:
  5. Science and technology – this comes up regularly during WP conferences. The pace of breakthroughs and technological spread continues to be phenomenal. Govts appear to be continuing to struggle to keep up to date on what is happening, and the trends in S&T – this has implications for so many areas of the BTWC regime.
  6. This leads to the third issue - the role of industry. We had a very good presentation and discussion about what can be done here – it may be that industry can have a clearer picture of some advances in science and emerging trends than government can.
  7. CBMs. Consensus appeared to be that these need further development and perhaps an overhaul.
  8. The intersessional process and the future of the ISU. In particular, the ISU and its staff command almost universal admiration, and an equally widespread sense that resources and responsibilities need to be increased and enhanced. Secretariat? OPCW-style organisation? More of what is there already?
  9. Article X - Article X appeared to be emerging as the critical issue – several cautioned against making it the only criteria for success, or the reason for failure, at the RC.
  10. Compliance. This was discussed in quite careful terms, possibly because of the turmoil around the issue in recent years – people know how divisive and destructive it can be. Clear tension appears to be emerging between those who feel that some sort of return to some sort of verification protocol (even if it’s not called that) is inevitable and necessary, and those that feel that a good verification system may simply be infeasible.
  11. One participant suggested, with agreement around the table, that everyone at the meeting concurred that something had to be done on these issues if the RC was to be successful, so these were the criteria for the Conference to be judged as successful or otherwise. However, there was little clear consensus about what needed to be done.
  12. Is this a problem? Possibly not…the RC is still a year away.
  13. I would add that there seemed (to me) to be a division between issues on which controversy was open and clearly-defined (e.g. Art X), others where controversy clearly existed but on which there was a detectable caution about how far to really take the dispute (e.g. verification). To put it another way, issues on which people were prepared to openly argue.
  14. This means that the question remained – for me – about which of these issues would be decisive in the sense that success or failure would hinge on making progress there. If agreement cannot be reached on these, would that constitute a failed Review?
  15. One final impression I took away is that the Review Conference looks complex – the sense of possible regime failure of 2006 is not there. That can be liberating, but it can also be daunting because it means that success can be harder to define and consequently harder to achieve.
  16. I will close by going back the point I made earlier, that the 2006 RC rebuilt the consensus. A point made in our concluding session was that the 2011 RC would have to think about what to do with that consensus, who to include within it, and what may be possible with it.
  17. There is, it seemed to me, still a great deal at stake next year – rather than whether there will be a BTWC, it’s all about what kind of BTWC and how robust it will be. The consensus on securing the BTWC future appears to be quite robust…the vision of how the BTWC works and how it should develop remains less clear.