MONDAY’S STATEMENT in Geneva to the Biological Weapons Convention conference by John R. Bolton, the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control, made news primarily because he named names. The U.S. government, said Bolton, is “concerned about potential use of biological weapons by terrorist groups, and states that support them. So I plan to name names. Prior to September 11, some would have avoided this approach. The world has changed, however, and so must our business-as-usual approach.”
This was very un-Geneva-like talk (at least for modern Geneva) and very un-State Department-like talk. Bolton proceeded to list Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Libya, Syria, and Sudan as states pursuing biological weapons programs that have been and are unconstrained by the Biological Weapons Convention. He took note of the efforts by Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda organization to acquire a biological warfare capability and pointed out the obvious: “Neither the Biological Weapons Convention nor the former draft BWC Protocol would stop biological terrorism by groups like al Qaeda or restrain their rogue-state patrons.”
