Weapons of mass destruction: An endless story

www.arabnews.com By Hassan Tahsin

After Sept. 11, the United States added to its war on terrorism the disposing of weapons of mass destruction. First of all, what are weapons of mass destruction? Who possess them? Who has the ability to manufacture and use them? Which country has previously used them?

As for the first question, we all know the answer — all kinds of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

Who owns them? The five permanent members of the UN Security Council possess the whole range of weapons of mass destruction and are fully capable of using them. In addition, others with the weapons include Israel, India, Pakistan and possibly North Korea. Chemical and biological weapons are available to a large number of countries and are sometimes known as “the poor man’s bomb.” Most of these countries have signed nuclear non-proliferation treaties (including chemical and biological). None of these countries, however, make their capabilities public and I believe that these are well known to the American administration whose ability to gather information by a wide variety of means is very great.

When we come to the third question, we see that there is more than one country with advanced nuclear programs and they are only awaiting a political decision which will allow them to start producing them. In this group are Brazil and Argentina.

What remains now is the last question and we know very well that the only time a nuclear weapon has been used was by the US when it destroyed the two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This leads us logically to demand that Washington be the first nation to dispose of its own weapons of mass destruction.

As for chemical and biological weapons, these were used a number of times by various European powers from the beginning to the end of the 20th century. The US record of using these weapons can be summarized in the following way:

The US used biological weapons in 1966 during the Vietnam War. They were used against civilian populations and also to destroy both crops and forests.

In 1971, the CIA attempted to kill Fidel Castro by poisoning his food or cigars but failed in these attempts. The CIA also killed half-a-million pigs in Cuba by spreading plague.

Israel was another leader in the use of chemical and biological weapons; it began doing so by spreading dysentery among the Palestinians in 1948.

In 1925, confronted with the danger of these weapons, the Geneva Protocol was drafted to prevent the use of chemical and biological weapons in wars and was ratified by 29 countries. The United States was in fact the most prominent country which refused to ratify or take any part in the protocol.

Individual, bilateral or otherwise limited attempts are not sufficient to make real the dream of ridding the world of weapons of mass destruction. One reason for this is that personal interests normally come into play when dealing with the problem. This situation is unacceptable.

The obligation to disarm falls first on the countries that have already used these weapons and only then on those which merely possess them. Nonetheless, all countries should meet in a new expanded international conference and take a more positive stand aimed at disposing of all kinds of weapons of mass destruction without exception; otherwise the problem will never be solved.

Arab News Opinion 10 February 2003