Chemical arms treaty makes unprecedented demands of industry
It took nearly a quarter of a century of grueling negotiations to craft the text of the comprehensive and verifiable chemical weapons treaty. But that may have been the easy part. Now representatives from about 90 of the more than 140 nations that have signed the treaty are at The Hague participating in a two-year exercise called the Preparatory Commission, or PrepCom. PrepCom's charge is to make concrete what are now merely words on paper. When it completes its work, the chemical industry will be ensnared in a web of requirements far surpassing any mandated by existing domestic legislation. PrepCom's agenda was scripted by the same Conference on Disarmament negotiators who labored in Geneva hammering out the treaty banning the production, stockpiling, transfer, and use of chemical weapons. They wanted to make certain that a structure was in place to monitor and verify compliance with the treaty once it entered into force, or becomes effective. The negotiators' agenda was approved by those countries that signed the treaty this past January in Pairs. It set out some 40 individual tasks for PrepCom, many of them highly technical and most of them potentially politically volatile. This paper discusses the problems facing PrepCom.
- OSTI ID:
- 6355251
- Journal Information:
- Chemical and Engineering News; (United States), Vol. 71:23; ISSN 0009-2347
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
CHEMICAL WARFARE AGENTS
TREATIES
CHEMICAL ANALYSIS
CHEMICAL INDUSTRY
CONSTRAINTS
DATA ACQUISITION
IMPLEMENTATION
MONITORING
ON-SITE INSPECTION
SAFETY
TRAINING
VERIFICATION
EDUCATION
INDUSTRY
WEAPONS
350101* - Arms Control- Policy
Negotiations
& Legislation- Treaties- (1987-)