[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 49 (Wednesday, April 23, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3483-S3484]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                      Condition 33 on Verification

  The last condition on which the Senate will be asked to vote is 
condition 33--strictly a killer condition--that would bar the United 
States from ratifying the CWC until the President can certify high 
confidence in U.S. capabilities to detect, within 1 year of a 
violation, the illicit production or storage of a single metric ton of 
chemical agent.
  The United States will never be able to certify this level of 
monitoring confidence, so condition 33 would bar U.S. participation in 
the CWC forever. It, too, must be struck.
  This condition sets an unrealistic and unachievable standard for 
monitoring the treaty and would therefore ensure that we would not 
become a party to the agreement.
  Nobody denies that compliance with some aspects of the CWC will be 
difficult to verify. Other aspects of the CWC--like the storage and 
destruction of declared chemical weapons stocks --will be verifiable 
with fairly high confidence. But a determined country could probably 
hide a small-scale program of producing or stockpiling illegal chemical 
agent. We all know that. The important point is that without CWC, such 
activities won't violate anything. Only if we join the convention, can 
we effectively combat chemical weapons production and stockpiling.
  Our Intelligence Community has testified that it would be very 
difficult to detect production of small quantities of chemical weapons. 
We do have high confidence, however, that we can detect cheating where 
it matters most: that is, if an adversary tries to translate illegal 
production into a militarily significant capability on the battlefield.
  This condition defines production of 1 ton as ``military 
significant''. But Richard Perle, a CWC critic, has testified that 
``the possession of lethal chemicals is not by, itself, sufficient to 
constitute a military capability.''
  And as Gen. Brent Scowcroft noted in testimony to the Foreign 
Relations Committee, CWC declarations on chemical exports will be a 
useful new tool: ``Right now, it is possible for a country to buy a few 
pounds of a precursor here or a few pounds there, a few pounds 
somewhere else, and to amass an abnormal supply without anybody ever 
noticing it. That won't be possible anymore. Therefore, we will have a 
better idea of what's going on and who the bad guys seem to be.''
  There is no need to adopt a 1-ton threshold for effective 
verification of the CWC. General Shalikashvili has testified that a 
single ton might have a real political impact, especially if used in a 
terrorist attack against unprotected persons. But Iran and Iraq used 
tens of tons per month against each other without altering the course 
of their war; studies for the Department of Defense found that it would 
take several hundred to a thousand tons to seriously disrupt U.S. 
logistics in a war; and the U.S. stockpile of chemical weapons--which 
we are committed to destroy whether we join the CWC or not--is about 
30,000 tons.
  General Shalikashvili went on to say that tonnage is not the only 
factor to consider. If a country's illicit chemical agent stockpile is 
to be translated into something militarily usable, there must also be 
weapons in which to put the agent. There must be an infrastructure for 
the handling of chemical weapons. And troops must be trained in the use 
and effective employment of the weapons. Each aspect of developing a 
real chemical weapons capability is potentially open to monitoring, and 
each aspect constitutes both a CWC violation and sufficient 
justification for the United States to request a challenge inspection.
  To quote General Shalikashvilli fully, ``a militarily significant 
quantity of chemical weapons is situationally dependent. Variables 
involved in determining this quantity are the military objective, 
weather, terrain, number of troops, type of chemical agents used, the 
chemical agent weapons system and method of deployment, and the 
chemical weapons defensive capability of the targeted force . . . the 
quantity is totally scenario dependent, and it would be difficult to 
cite a specific amount as militarily significant.''
  U.S. intelligence officials have testified that the CWC will add to 
their monitoring tools to cover a significant target--one that they 
will have to monitor whether we join the CWC or not. Data declarations 
will give the

[[Page S3484]]

United States an important baseline from which to work. Routine 
inspections will make it more difficult and expensive for declared 
facilities to be used in illicit chemical weapons activities. And 
challenge inspections pose further risks to would-be violators, while 
giving the United States and other countries the opportunity to have 
the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons seek further 
indications or hard evidence of violations.
  U.S. information can go a long way toward helping the organization to 
mount effective inspections. That is what the United States did with 
the International Atomic Energy Agency in North Korea, and it worked. 
An important agreed condition--condition No. 5--has been worked out 
with Senator Shelby, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on 
Intelligence, to require that intelligence sharing will be conducted 
only after U.S. information is sanitized to minimize any risk to 
sensitive sources or methods. That is what the United States does 
currently, and what it should continue to do.

  With the United States an original member of the organization, we 
will be able to work for effective inspection procedures and to provide 
the organization the information it needs to maximize its 
effectiveness. The organization's effectiveness will aid our own 
agencies, in turn, to monitor activities that are of major concern to 
U.S. military leaders and policymakers. That is why the CWC has been 
endorsed by every Chairman from the Joint Chiefs of Staff over the last 
20 years.
  As David Kay former chief U.N. inspector in Iraq, Ronald Lehman, 
former Assistant Secretary of Defense and Director of ACDA, and James 
Woolsey, former Director of Central Intelligence, wrote recently in The 
Washington Post, ``It is hard to understand why critics of the CWC 
believe it is to the advantage of U.S. forces--who one day may have to 
face an adversary armed with chemical weapons--to let such development 
proceed unhindered by vigorous inspection. Such inspections can slow a 
chemical weapons program, make it more expensive and less effective and 
can develop the usable evidence needed to convince doubting allies.''
  There is no such thing as perfect verifiability in a treaty, but the 
CWC provides useful tools. As Woolsey, Lehman and Kay put it ``the CWC 
offers at the outset verification tools that go beyond those of other 
arms-control treaties.''
  We should all support giving the U.S. Intelligence Community the 
necessary resources to monitor worldwide chemical weapons activities--
and, in the process, to monitor CWC compliance--as well as possible. 
The CWC will aid in that monitoring, as well as in focusing 
international sanctions on any violators. All of these gains for our 
Intelligence Communities' ability to monitor global chemical weapons 
proliferation will be lost unless this condition is struck from the 
resolution of ratification. The national security requires a vote to 
strike this condition.