Biological Weapons Trilateral Statement/Agreement

Overview

Potential Facility Impacts

Current Activities

Overview

Purpose and Background

The Biological Weapons Trilateral Statement/ Agreement [long title: Joint Statement of the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America of 1992 on Biological Weapons] details a number of steps to address compliance concerns regarding the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). The Statement was precipitated by American and British concerns about Russian compliance with the BWC and provides for visits—not inspections—"to any nonmilitary biological site at any time." Such visits include access, sampling, personnel interviews and audio and video taping "to remove ambiguities" concerning BWC compliance. "Nonmilitary sites" include non-government commercial facilities.

Following the Statement's issuance in September 1992, working groups concluded a Proprietary Agreement in May 1993 on the principles and procedures needed to protect proprietary information during visits to non-military biological sites. Visits to Russian facilities in Pokrov and Berdsk occurred in October 1993 and in Omutninsk and Obolensk in January 1994. Reciprocal Russian visits to three American facilities and one British facility occurred in February and March 1994. In the United States, the visits took place at the Pfizer facilities in Terre Haute, Indiana, and Groton, Connecticut, as well as at the Department of Agriculture Plum Island facility off the coast of New York. All visits to nonmilitary biological sites were completed in 1994.

Under the Statement, all sides also established expert working groups to reach agreement on the procedures for visits to military biological facilities. In 1996, negotiations broke down over the definition of a military biological facility. The Russians wanted to include any facility used in offensive or defensive biological warfare activities since 1946. This would have greatly expanded the number of eligible U.S. military facilities. The U.S. offensive program ended in 1969, and the United States wanted to include only facilities in use after 1975, when the BWC entered into force. No negotiations have taken place since 1996, and no visits to military sites have been conducted to date.

Potential Facility Impacts

Key Verification Measures

Since the primary purpose of the Trilateral Statement is confidence building, there are no explicit verification measures. However, the dynamics of the initial round of visits and the draft procedures for visits to military biological facilities are comparable in many respects to inspections.

Should an agreement be reached on the procedures for visits to military biological facilities, Russian visits to U.S. military biological facilities could take place as early as 30 days after signature. A wide range of DoD facilities, possibly including facilities outside the continental United States, could then be impacted. If an agreement on military sites includes facilities involved in offensive production prior to 1969, a larger number of facilities would be affected.

Visits or other forms of observation continue to be possible in non-government facilities, but their probability is extremely low.