I move:
That Dáil Éireann approves the terms of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction, signed by Ireland in Paris on the 14th day of January, 1993, a copy of which was laid before Dáil Éireann on the 5th day of June, 1996."
I am pleased to move this motion approving the terms of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons, commonly known as the Chemical Weapons Convention.
Chemical weapons are, by their nature, among the most odious of the weapons of mass destruction. They can have no place in a civilised society. Modern efforts to ban chemical warfare go back over 120 years, to the Brussels Declaration of 1874 which prohibited the use of poisons and poisoned bullets in warfare.
The great merit of the 1993 Chemical Weapons Conventions is that it provides for the elimination of this entire category of weapons. It is an unprecedented international disarmament agreement, unique in its scope in negotiating history and in the comprehensive verification system which is an integral part of the agreement.
The convention was the result of 24 years of negotiations on the framework of the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament. The ending of the Cold War gave fresh impetus to protracted discussions, so that the negotiations were concluded by September 1992. The Convention was approved by consensus at the General Assembly of the United Nations on 30 November 1992 and opened for signature in Paris on 13 January 1993. To date is has been signed by 160 countries, including Ireland, which was among the original signatories.
The 1925 Geneva Protocol had already banned chemical and bacteriological warfare. The Chemical Weapons Convention, for its part, is designed to exclude the possibility of the use or threat of use of chemical weapons.
Thus, it prohibits the development, production, acquisition, stockpiling, retention and direct or indirect transfer of chemical weapons under any circumstances. Each State party to the convention must undertake never, under any circumstances, to use chemical weapons, to engage in military preparations to use chemical weapons, or to assist, encourage or induce any one to engage in prohibited activities.
A core element is that all chemical weapons and related production facilities have to be declared and thereafter eliminated under international supervision, within ten years of the entry into force of the convention. This provision is of real and pressing interest to the international community. The two principal possessors of chemical weapons, the US and the Russian Federation, are thought to have, between them, some 70,000 tonnes of chemical weapons. Up to two score countries in total are believed to possess some chemical weapons. While their production is cheap, the destruction of chemical weapons is both very expensive and environmentally challenging.
The convention also prohibits the use of riot control agents as a method of warfare and reaffirms the prohibition under international law of the use of herbicides as a method of warfare. Importantly, it establishes the right of States parties to request and receive assistance and protection against the use or threat of use of chemical weapons. This provision is of particular interest to developing countries, as not all countries have highly developed capabilities in this regard.
The Chemical Weapons Convention breaks new ground in multilaterally negotiated disarmament agreements by requiring State parties to demonstrate conclusively their compliance with its provisions. The convention includes a far-reaching verification regime which is designed to enhance the security of States parties by limiting any possibility of clandestine development, production, storage or use of chemical weapons. Ireland looks forward to exercising our right to demonstrate full compliance with our obligations under the convention. States parties in good standing will have nothing to fear from the verification system.
Not later than 30 days after the convention enters into force, each State party must submit detailed declarations with respect to its possession or control of chemical weapons, of old and abandoned chemical weapons and of chemical weapons production facilities together with a general plan for their destruction, the provisions governing which are spelled out comprehensively. Declared chemical weapons production, storage and destruction facilities will be subject to systematic on-site inspections.
The convention lays down how these inspections will be carried out.
Given that chemical weapons are relatively easy to produce, the convention also requires declarations of chemical facilities that are engaged in permitted activities related to certain scheduled chemicals. Its monitoring system thus involves declarations and routine inspections of relevant civilian chemical industry facilities. It is the proposed declarations and routine inspections of these civilian facilities that are most relevant for Ireland and particularly for our chemical industry. I will revert to this aspect later.
In addition to arrangements for routine inspections, the convention is reinforced by an unprecedented challenge inspection regime. Subject to certain precautions designed to guard against frivolous use of this mechanism, the challenge inspection provision allows any State party to trigger an international inspection at any facility or location in any other State party at short notice, in order to clarify and resolve questions of possible non-compliance. The State party which is the object of a challenge inspection has no right of refusal, an extremely important element of this convention.
To oversee its operation, the convention provides for the establishment of a body called the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons - OPCW — which will be based in The Hague. The OPCW will establish an inspectorate which will have the right to conduct a range of on-site verification and inspection activities to ascertain the validity of each State party's declarations. This will result in the carrying out, at short notice, of routine inspections of certain facilities from time to time. As with bodies established under other international conventions, the budget of the OPCW will be provided by contributions by States parties based on the United Nations' scale of assessment.
Each State party is required to designate an authority to ensure effective implementation of the convention's provisions by, inter alia, liaison with the OPCW, as well as liaison with other States parties. In Ireland's case the Government has designated the Department of Enterprise and Employment as the national authority. The National Authority for Occupational Safety and Health will carry out Ireland's obligations in relation to the convention.
The convention is expected to have an important role in controlling international trade in substances susceptible of being used by would-be proliferators to develop chemical weapons programmes. This in itself can act as a deterrent to proliferation. Trade in scheduled chemicals with non-State parties will be subjected to certain limitations and restrictions. This means, inter alia, that failure by any EU member state to ratify the convention would have implications for the Single Market, given that once the convention entered into force, trade in chemicals between State parties and non-State parties will be subject to restrictions. All partners, not least Ireland as future Presidency, are determined that this situation will not arise.
As I have illustrated, the Chemical Weapons Convention places quite onerous obligations on State parties. In particular, the obligation to demonstrate full compliance is more highly developed in this convention than in any previous, multilaterally negotiated disarmament agreement. For these reasons, although it has not yet entered into force, the Chemical Weapons Convention already serves as a kind of benchmark against which other disarmament and non-proliferation agreements in the making are measured. Its verification provisions are seen as providing a strong precedent to be emulated in new treaties under negotiation or in existing treaties which are being strengthened.
The negotiations to conclude a comprehensive test ban treaty, for example, have been influenced by the experience of the Chemical Weapons Convention. Let me state at this point my strong hope that these negotiations will be completed on schedule, so that a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty which includes stringent provisions for monitoring compliance, will be be opened for signature at the United Nations in September this year. Following from the indefinite extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1995, a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996, with the coming into force of the Chemical Weapons Convention early in 1997, would amount to heartening progress towards ending the proliferation and advancing the complete elimination of weapons of mass destruction. That has long been a policy of successive Governments and all parties in this House.
The process of strengthening the implementation of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention is also influenced by the Chemical Weapons Convention. In this House on 30 May, The Tánaiste made clear that the period of the Irish Presidency of the EU would be crucial to the final outcome. The Tánaiste said we will do all we can during our term of office to give impetus to the negotiations aimed at reinforcing the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention with a legally binding and effective verification regime which we now have in regard to chemical weapons.
The Chemical Weapons Convention is now expected to enter into force around January 1997. Sixty-five ratifications are needed to trigger a 180 day lead-in period to entry into force. To date, 52 countries have ratified the convention. These include 11 of our European Union partners. Like Ireland, the remaining European Union countries, Belgium, Luxembourg and Portugal are well advanced in the ratification process. Besides being necessary for reasons related to the Single Market, ratification by all 15 European Union members as part of the first 65 would send a strong political message to the rest of the world about the great importance which the Union attaches to the convention and to its role in the elimination of weapons of mass destruction. Four more ratifications from the side of the Union would bring the, total significantly closer to the threshold figure of 65 and would establish the conditions for the Union to take diplomatic action to promote the earliest possible entry into force of the convention and thereafter the widest possible adherence to it. Ireland, which as Presidency will be leading EU efforts to promote these aims, should itself have ratified before 1 July. If, as we all hope, the United States is in a position to ratify in the coming weeks, the remaining ratifications necessary to trigger entry into force could come quickly. It is also very important for the credibility of the convention that Russia should ratify at an early date, because between them Russia and the United States have more than 70,000 tonnes of chemical weapons.
I met the Executive Secretary of the Preparatory Commission for the OPCW, Mr. Ian Kenyon, when he visited Dublin on 30 May for discussions concerned with ratification of the convention.
To carry out Ireland's obligations under the convention, implementing legislation is required. To this end, the Government has approved draft heads of a Bill prepared by the Minister for Enterprise and Employment in consultation with representatives of the industry concerned. The draft Bill is being considered by the parliamentary draughtsman and we hope to publish it very shortly with a view to ensuring that the legislation and any other measures needed to enable Ireland to discharge fully its obligations under the convention will have been adopted in advance of the entry into force of the convention.
In its role as protector of the safety of workers who handle toxic chemicals, the National Authority for Occupational Safety and Health is well placed to identify those companies in Ireland whose handling of scheduled chemicals make them subject to annual declarations under the convention. While it is not yet clear how many Irish facilities might be affected and while the number could be relatively large, the provisions of data for inclusion in national declarations is not in itself an onerous task. Much of the information required may already be available to the national Authority in other contexts.
Routine and challenge inspections during the first year of operation of the convention are likely to focus on chemical weapons facilities rather than civilian facilities. However, in subsequent years, some routine inspections of Irish chemical facilities can be expected for the specific and limited purpose of verifying, the data on the more toxic chemicals that will have been provided in our annual declarations under the convention. The number of facilities in Ireland likely to be affected by inspections is thought to be very small and in any event significantly smaller than the number subject to declarations. Although we do not anticipate a challenge inspection of a facility in Ireland on foot of an allegation of non-compliance from another State Party, the legislation powers must be put in place to enable Ireland to meet that contingency.
One of the functions of the OPCW is to help developing countries to cope with the obligations imposed by the Chemical Weapons Convention. During my meeting with him last month, I told Mr. Kenyon that we would consider supporting the efforts of the organisation in this area through the Irish aid programme if a suitable project could be identified. This would be in the area of training. Officials from developing countries would be trained by the organisation on the potential use of chemicals for chemical weapons purposes.
The effort incurred in implementing the Chemical Weapons Convention in this country will be very modest in relation to the political and practical costs of failure to ratify. In supporting this motion, the House can demonstrate Ireland's serious commitment to playing our part in banishing these noxious weapons from the face of the earth. I am confident that the House will share my view that the Chemical Weapons Convention is a precious contribution to a most valuable objective and that Ireland should ratify it at the earliest possible date.