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Ambassador Richard Butler DR. O'TOOLE: I hope you were enjoying the conversation at dinner. I am Tara O'Toole from the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies. And it is my great honor to introduce our evening speaker. Ambassador Richard Butler is entitled to call himself a citizen of the world in view of his distinguished career spent in pursuit of peace and worldwide disarmament. He was, in fact, born in Australia and is a permanent resident of the United States. He has held many important posts in Australia's Foreign Service, including Ambassador to Thailand, Ambassador to Cambodia where he was deeply involved in negotiation of the Cambodian Peace Agreements. He represented Australia to the International Atomic Energy Agency and in 1983 was appointed Australia's first Ambassador for Disarmament. He led the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons and in 1996 managed the U.N.'s adoption of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. For a change of pace from weapons of mass destruction, he was in 1994 president of the Economic and Social Council of the U.N. and in this role he established the Global AIDS Program, U.N. AIDS. He tells me that in his view immunology is to public health as arms control is to international peace and security. He also served for five years as Australia's permanent Ambassador to the U.N. and of course from 1997 to 1999, he held the formidably serious post of Executive Director of the U.N. Special Commission charged with disarmament of Iraq. He is the author of The Greatest Threat, Iraq, Weapons of Mass Destruction and The Crisis of Global Security which was published this year. Please welcome Ambassador Richard Butler. (Applause.) AMBASSADOR BUTLER: Tara, thank you very much for that very kind and generous introduction and beyond that, thanks to the great Johns Hopkins University for holding this meeting, the second of them, on this vital subject and for giving me the great honor of being here and being able to take part in your proceedings. The subject I've been asked to talk about is international control of biological weapons and I guess in some ways that's appropriate because I've spent over a quarter of a century of my professional career involved in international efforts to control and reduce weapons of mass destruction. But I do have to enter this disclaimer as I start my remarks. I am not a biologist. I hope you won't hold that against me. As I glitteringly display to you my ignorance of the subject that I think probably 99.9 percent of you in this room are the experts at, please forgive me. My claim, my reason for accepting this invitation is because I deeply believe in the business of controlling weapons of mass destruction and I know enough about their biological expression, biological weapons, to know that they constitute the greatest threat to us that is visible today and will be with us for some time. And when I was asked, therefore, would I come to this truly important conference and talk about the international aspects of controlling biological weapons I set aside -- I actually as the organizers can tell you, in my first response I asked, are you sure? Don't you want a real biologist? And they said no, we want you to talk about what you've done and where you've been. And I said well, because your cause is just and the subject is so crucial, I'll have a shot at it. That's my extended apology and introduction. You're all now suitably primed. The bar has been set really low -- (Laughter.) -- and I can just relax and say whatever is on this piece -- I use graph paper because this is a scientific meeting, right? (Laughter and applause.) So I'll tell you what I'm going to do. Those are notes. It's not a set speech. I'm going to open my heart to you and tell you some really true stuff that I believe to be true and I know from personal experience and I'm going to chance with you and it's my gift and tribute to you because of who you are and what you're doing. I'm going to chance with you for the first time anywhere some ideas that I've been working on, on how we might try and cut this terrible knot that we face with respect to the biological weapons convention and when I've finished having my shot at it, I believe we will be able to have at least a brief period of discussion and I would welcome that. So as I said, I'll start by opening my heart by telling you a true story from my time in Iraq. Because this story, apart from being interesting, has got in it some of the key elements and problems that you and we are all dealing with, with respect to biological weapons. The subject of this story is Iraq and its biological weapons program. It starts in 1991 when the Security Council after Iraq's ejection from Kuwait, when the Security Council simply required that Iraq have taken away from it any biological weapons it had created and the means to make them, the language in Resolution 687 which is law, it's international law under Article 25 of the charter, the language was that these things must be and I quote, "destroyed, removed or rendered harmless." And what was specified was all biological weapons, other weapons as well, chemical and nuclear, but I'm talking about biology, all biological weapons, all places where they were made and all means and materials used in their manufacture. To make this possible, the first step was that Iraq was required to give declarations to the Special Commission that the Council had created to carry out the work of disarming Iraq, the Commission that I came to head. Those declarations were the first of a three part step that was to bring about the destruction, removal or rendering harmless of Iraq's illegal weapons. Declarations, verification, and destruction. So the declarations were crucial and bear this in mind as you consider your wider subject. Declarations, crucial. Fundamental facts are required. And the cooperation in this case of the State concerned was required because they alone could author those declarations. Now what Iraq did from the beginning was it entered an utterly false declaration. Quite simply, Iraq from the beginning said, "what biological weapons?" (Laughter.) We have none. There was one piece of paper in pencil in Arabic that referred in passing to some relevant research. But their declared stance was that they had no biological weapons. We pursued them for four years, increasingly confronting them with evidence to the contrary and it took four years before they moved to their second position which was to say, "oops, we lied." (Laughter.) "We did have some biological weapons, but we fall on our swords. We put our hand on the Koran and tell you, none of this was offensive. This was an entirely defensive biological weapons program." Before I leave here tonight, I want someone to solve a problem I've had the last few years, that I've had deeply. Please explain to me what in the name of God is a defensive biological weapons program? (Laughter.) So we said. "okay, you've got a defensive biological weapons program. Give us a declaration on it." And they did. And they gave us a document which then in the subsequent four years we asked them repeatedly to clarify it, to improve it, to add to it, to make sense of it because it was utterly without meaning. It was internally contradictory. We discovered some documents on a chicken farm in 1995, believe it or not, they call them the chicken farm documents. One million pages of them. You know, from that guy who took that ungifted decision of running away to Jordan, he happened to be married to Saddam's daughter. He ran away to Jordan and after a few months accepted the statement that all is forgiven, come home. (Laughter.) He had a chicken farm and he was also in charge of the WMD program and there was a million pages of documents at that farm and we got hold of them and we learned more about their biology program and by the time I was pursuing them vigorously on the biology issue, I kept saying to Mr. Terik Aziz (Phonetic.), the Deputy President of Iraq whom the great man had put in charge of the anti-UNSCOM industry. It was the second largest ministry in the government of Iraq, the first being the Minister of Defense. And I started to pursue Aziz about this declaration saying that it was so unconvincing and he then started to argue with us saying we were overly fastidious, we didn't accept their statement that it was merely a defensive program and it hadn't been very sophisticated. One of the documents they gave us to prove that it hadn't been very sophisticated was a document that showed how few Ph.D.s in biology they had in Iraq and that proved that it couldn't have been a serious biological weapons program and so on. Now I'm wasting time. (Laughter.) I just get fascinated by this stuff. I mean it's just -- does anyone -- it's like a Fish Called Wanda, you know? It's like that. (Laughter.) The Monty Python Show. (Laughter.) So I said all right, you don't take my word for it. We'll submit your declaration to study by international experts and we did that on four occasions under my watch. Four times. We put the Iraqi biological weapons declaration to international study and four times these experts reported to us that it wasn't worth the paper it was written on.
To be quite specific, they said Iraq's declaration on its biological weapons program does not form an acceptable basis for verification. That's the jargon we use. There was no way that we could verify in any acceptable way the nature, size of their biological program. But through our own resources we were able to establish that they made the whole range of BW agents, that they had weaponized them, including putting them into missile warheads. They had even gone into fields, the rationale for which was inexplicable in battlefield terms and I'm thinking in particular of aflatoxin. But I think we now have some sense of why they were making aflatoxin, because people in the south of Iraq and I gather, I hope Christine Goslin won't mind me mentioning her from Liverpool University, who's second to none in this world in looking into what Saddam has done in the north of Iraq. There is evidence of growing rates and disturbingly high rates of liver cancer in population areas in Iraq that don't favor Saddam. So it would appear, the implication is that there was a purpose to aflatoxin and it was genocidal. But they made the whole range of biological warfare agents and we have reason to think, partly through Dr. Goslin's work, probably used some of them at least internally in Iraq. We had evidence that I presented to Terik Aziz (Phonetic.) of him testing of biological weapons, possibly on Iranian prisoners that they took after the Iran-Iraq war. And then finally, two things to wrap up the Iraq portion of my remarks. Finally, on an exquisite occasion in Baghdad -- is that an oxymoron? No. On an exquisite occasion in Baghdad, Terik Aziz (Phonetic.) opened his heart to me and I'll tell you frankly exactly how it happened. I had become so thoroughly sick and tired of the bullying and the heckering that had taken place in a meeting that had been taking place in formal circumstances, that when he asked me personally, just the two of us, to have coffee afterwards, I decided I didn't want any more of that, so I chanced my arm by saying tell me, wise man, tell me, great man, your impressions of the region. How are the politics in the Middle East? Tell me what you think about things? And he loved it. And he did. He told me what he thought about all matter of things. And some of it was chilling, but above all this, this man who had lied to the world for four years about Iraq's biological weapons program and I had said to him across the table on one occasion, you, Deputy Prime Minister, lied to the Security Council. You lied around the world when you said Iraq had no biological weapons program. To which, as an aside, he said well, that was a mistake, meaning not the lie, but that they got caught. This man had lied in that fashion. In private, in private, he said to me, of course, we made biological weapons and this is in my book, so I'm not spilling this out of school as it were. He said of course we made biological weapons. He said we made it in order to deal with the Jews. That's what he said in private. I know that sounds dreadfully anti-Semitic and of course, they are. But for those of you in this audience who would take that extremely personally and I certainly took the deepest offense at it, let me also point out to you that he also used the ethnic name for the Iranians, at all stages called them Persians. You see, Terik Aziz (Phonetic.) can't use the political terminology for the State of Israel. He has to call them the Jews. And he can't use the term Iranians. He has to call them the Persians. At all times, ethnocentric in approach. And he told me that yes, of course, we had made biological weapons and we made them in order to use on the Jews. I was then supposed to forget that when we went back into formal session outside that room, when he would go back to saying what biological weapons? (Laughter.) Now, finally, on the 8th of August 1998, when everything came to an end with UNSCOM, it did so after I had made an extraordinary and new offer to him in order to bring to account all of the existing WMD systems of Iraq including biology and the most extraordinary part of my offer had been in biology. I had said to him, I propose to leap across the place where we've been stuck for years trying to work from the bottom up to account for the amount of gross media that you imported from outside, to account for the manufacturing processes you used, the filling of various munitions and so on, where we had been stuck in a quagmire of argument about how much media, what facilities, etcetera. I said I propose to leap over that as we try to bring the period of the disarmament of Iraq to a close. I said here's my deal. Give me the finished weapons. Give me the munitions and the warheads that have been filled with biological agent and the evidence I need that says that's all there is, and I will destroy, remove or render harmless those weapons. After all, it's weapons that we're principally concerned about and I will tell the Security Council that we're done with the weapons of the past and provided we can then maintain the monitoring system to see that you don't make more of them in the future, I'll be prepared to include that in the final disarmament account for Iraq.
And he was very interested in that. He said, but when on the 8th of August 1998 they put their final demand on me to declare Iraq disarmed, or else, and I across the table utterly refused. I said I will not because I cannot because you haven't given me the materials I need to do so. The key thing that he had not given me was an answer to that proposal. The key weapons category that I discerned by their level of deception that they wanted to retain was biology. They've retained their no how in the nuclear field. They retained a certain quantum of chemical weapons. I know that. And they were already beginning to rebuild their missile capability. I took that up with them and they told me to get lost. And that's all now established, absent inspection for the last two years. They're back on track in all weapons areas. But if you judge a person by their behavior, rather than their language and if I look very carefully at what Iraq did in those closing, difficult days of 1998, I am bound in logic to conclude that the area of weaponry that Saddam Hussein was most desperate to protect from us was biological weapons, that this is his weapon of choice. His retention of that capability is what he was prepared to trade off against the welfare of 22 million ordinary Iraqis, I mean the lifting of sanctions which would have followed had I been able to do what I proposed, that is, get the extant biological weapons off them and destroy them. The evidence of their behavior is a deep attachment to biological weapons. Now the Iraq case is important because Saddam Hussein's persistent addiction to weapons of mass destruction, his track record of using them makes him a singular character in the contemporary world. And the thing that has to be highlighted in this context in terms of now as I move to talking about international control is that he has done what he has done in the development of weapons of mass destruction from within the arms control regimes. He was a few months away and some now say no months at all that he had, in fact, developed an atomic, nuclear explosive device, but I believe he was a few months away from successfully completing a nuclear explosive device when we intervened. This was done while Iraq was a member of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. He developed his biological weapons capacity while a signatory to the Biological Weapons Convention. Because it's more recent in time, Iraq is not a party to the Chemical Weapons Convention, but it was a party to the 1925 Geneva Protocol and was instructed by the Security Council, under law to join the Chemical Weapons Convention, yet Iraq developed chemical weapons. And this case is therefore a serious one because of its special features that I've just enumerated as we look at the business of international control on biological weapons. And there are lessons that can be learned from this case. Now turning to international control. I envisage two approaches towards control of biological weapons. One is from the top down and the other is from the ground or the bottom up. You must think I'm deeply attached to bottoms up or something because this is the second time that I will have mentioned that. The top down is actually almost exclusively international in character and what I'm talking about -- sorry, it's almost exclusively international and it certainly is substantially in the public sector. The bottom up approach is much more significantly national, but can be the subject of international standards and it is very substantially carried out in the private sector. Now I'm going to illustrate what I mean. The top down approach is what we have on the whole today with one notable exception, that of enforcement, but I'll come to that. The top down approach is the classic way in which for the last almost half century, remember Allamagordo (Phonetic.) was in July 1945 and it was the beginning of the modern period of weapons of mass destruction. And in January 1946, the United States made the first proposals, the Baruk (Phonetic.) Plan to the United Nations for the control of atomic weapons. So we've been going now for about 50 years in this vein, designing top down, international approaches to the control of weapons of mass destruction. And they have these characteristics: first of all, the establishment of a global norm. That's point one, a norm. A simple norm that says this weapon is inadmissable in civilized society, expressed in various ways, but essentially that the creation, use, deployment, transfer to others, etcetera of the weapon in question is inadmissable. That's the norm you find in the NPT. It's the norm you find in the CWC and in the BWC. Secondly, the creation of a commitment, typically in the form of a treaty or a convention, same thing, a contract, if you like, but they call it a treaty or a convention, a political commitment to give effect to that norm. It's simple. You establish the norm. The next question that leaps off the page is well, how do you give effect to that norm? The answer is you invite nation states to sign up, to sign the treaty and say we will never possess, make, use or transfer to others this inadmissable weapon. But then the next question that also leaps off the page, the question and I can tell you for all my years in arms control negotiations is the second most important question. I'll come to the first most important question in a moment. The second most important question, the one that immediately follows as soon as you start to negotiate a treaty is how will we know if everyone is keeping that commitment? In other words, by what means will we verify that commitment made in a treaty to the norm that is the fundament of that treaty. So it's a three-legged stool. Norm, commitment, verification. And typically, a means of verification is drawn up which involves an organization, inspectors, reports, declarations and so on. So the treaty partners can see that those who have entered into this commitment are keeping the commitment and it is believed that when all see that this is happening, that a climate of confidence will be established and will grow as each day passes where reports come in saying nothing happened. That's the toughest business about being in disarmament. The best news is no news and you can't get anyone to write about it or talk about it on television to say that guess what, nothing happened under the NPT this year. No one is going to write that story. But that's the best news. Like a couple of people I spoke with with drinks here tonight who had been down in Sydney for the Olympics from the standpoint of possible biological terrorism there and nothing happened and I said well, you succeeded. And they deserve applause for that. But no one was told that because that's the nature of arms control verification and measures. Now the first most important question that follows from this three legged structure and it's the most difficult one of all and it's one that I will emphasize greatly in the next few minutes, it's the missing one, is enforcement which would turn this three legged stool into a much more solid four legged table of norm, commitment, verification and then in the event that means of verification show or other means show that a treaty partner, like Saddam, is cheating from within, is breaking the law, then there needs to be an assured credible means of enforcing commitment to the treaty. And it is the absence of that which is in my opinion one of the most serious deficiencies into today's structure of control of weapons of mass destruction and in the case of the Biological Weapons Convention, we don't have either that fourth leg or the third leg. We don't yet have an adequate means of verification of the commitments that some 140 States have now made under that convention, let alone any reliable predicable means of enforcement in the event of an infraction such as the flagrant infraction that has been committed for over a decade now by Iraq. I will return in a minute for what this means and what my first time in public proposals are, but first, I'll just talk quickly about the other approach which is from the floor up, the bottom up approach that is necessary to future biological weapons control. You know this better than I do because this is the field where most of you work. These are the things I said that are largely in the private sector and they're largely within nations. And I will mention four key loci, key points where control needs to be developed and maintained. It is already in existence in good measure in countries like this great country. I don't know whether it exists in Florida. I had to say Florida sometime. (Laughter.) The first of these key points is the points where there are decisions taken by individuals about access to the knowledge of how to make biological weapons, whether that's in universities, research establishments, on the internet. What I'm going to say here is very far reaching stuff and deeply appreciate that, but I've got say it. One of the key barriers to making any weapons of mass destruction is that if you don't have the knowledge, then you can't do it. So there are key places in domestic society in this and in other countries at which decisions are taken on who will have access to the knowledge. That's the first locus of control.
The second, the same principle applies with access to the materials. There are key places where the materials required exist and decisions are taken as to who has access to them. And this is a big problem because as you all know very well one can order dried anthrax spores on the internet today, if you've got what a university accreditation number or whatever, something like that. Now these are key places where -- was that not true? You're laughing at that. Isn't that true? From the Maryland Laboratory, just up the road, right, good. Give me their address later. (Laughter.) Now there are also key decisions and this is really tough. There are key decisions taken by people in the economy with bearing on who gets access to the relevant materials and knowledge. And their decisions could well be taken solely on that ground, that if we sell this process or this technology, this, I believe, will be increasingly the case in the future where the processes involved are potentially very expensive or great earners of revenue, that there will be significant temptation to simply sell the process in order to make money. These are key points at which control needs to be established. And finally, there are the points at which decisions are taken by politicians or leading or decision makers in the military on whether or not biological weapons should be created or held in reserve or transferred to others, etcetera. Now, those decisions lie far beneath the overarching norm in international structure that I was describing a moment ago with the possible exception of the last category of decisions by politicians and leaders of the military, they're all largely in private hands. This is something that challenges us more deeply with biological weapons than with any other field. They make biological weapons control vastly -- sorry, I'll put it the other way around. The order of difficulty involved here makes nuclear weapons control seem like a piece of cake in comparison to biological weapons control. But any serious system of control of the proliferation of biological weapons within a given country and therefore under the purview of any compliance system under a treaty and therefore internationally would actually have to include control at those points in decision with respect to knowledge, materials, economy and national, political and defense related decisions. Now these latter are deeply complex, but I'll just say one sentence about them. They require us in the future to completely abandon the line of distinction that has previously existed between what is the duty and role of the public sector, the government, through treaties and so on with respect to controlling a dangerous substance, in this case, biological weapons. And the role and responsibilities of the private sector. They cannot be as conveniently compartmentalized as they were in the past with respect to some other weapons. Any sensible regime of control in the future will have to see virtually co-equal participation by government and private sector, if we're going to have a snowball's chance in hell of getting this difficult job done. My subject has been international control, principally, so I'll return to that. But it has bearing on domestic control and now I'm going top ut to you my new thoughts. Seven key requirements, seven things I think are required if we're going to have a chance of defeating this demon of the potential spread of biological weapons, both in State hands and in non-State, in other words, terrorist hands. First, the norm that these weapons should exist nowhere needs to be strengthened. It is stated fairly unambiguously in the biological weapons convention and elsewhere, but I believe it needs to be strengthened and stated more sharply, and I specifically propose that the position of biological weapons or action unambiguously designed to produce them should be categorized as a crime against humanity. Secondly, and this has consequences that we may wish to discuss. I doubt that anybody in this room would challenge the assertion that I've made in substance, these weapons are in and of themselves a crime against humanity. What conceivable human purpose can biological weapons serve? The point I'm making by saying that they should be listed amongst the crimes against humanity of which genocide is one that is to set up the following circumstances. Secondly, this would then enable the community of nations to conduct themselves accordingly. When it became clear to that community that a State or a non-State group was seeking possession of those weapons or had them, there would be complete justification for taking whatever action was necessary to remove those weapons. That implies that fourth leg of the table that I mentioned, namely, reliable enforcement and that's my third point. There must be developed consistent, credible, reliable enforcement of the norm that says no person should have biological weapons. And that means, if necessary, by military means. And what I am proposing -- although I strongly doubt that if what I am proposing were accepted, if this were a norm that the possession of those weapons were a crime against humanity, that the nations of the world were unified in that purpose and it was credible that when they were faced with an infraction, a crime against humanity, they would take whatever action was necessary to deal with it, I doubt that would almost ever have to be military action, but it should be there if required. My fourth point is that for that purpose we need to strengthen the means of verification because I've talked about credible reports of infractions of this norm, this crime against humanity and that requires urgent action better than it's been taken up to the present time. It's presently under way in Geneva, I gather. When a new Administration takes office in this country, it requires, above all, because we are the only ones who can do it, for the United States to take up this challenge first with the Russians and then with others, to insist that this is serious. This is a crime against humanity. This norm in the treaty is real and it is a matter of great priority to develop the means of verification to show whether or not a crime is being committed or compliance is being maintained. And my next point, I think, fifth point is that there should be a place where these reports are judged to take the heat off of an individual country like the United States and there, I propose that there should be a council like the Security Council, but in which there are no vetoes, a council of nations, the business of selecting who they are would not be such a difficulty, which sits ad hoc to receive the reports of the verifying agencies that all is sound under any given WMD Treaty. But in the case of biology, to be the place where reports and verification of compliance with the biological weapons convention are received and if like the Sydney Olympics, they're all good reports, fine, but occasionally, when they're not, the discussion and decision making could take place in that council, the Council on Biological Weapons, the Council on Weapons of Mass Destruction, if you like. Decision making could take place, including the decision to authorize the use of force to put down the infraction involved. My next point and last, I think, seventh point, no, sixth point is that the private sector must be engaged in this, the biological weapons area more than any other, must include engagement by the private sector in maintaining the norm, in providing reports to the authorities of attempts to acquire criminally prohibited substantives and so on. And that for that purpose and this is my seventh point, relevant national law needs to be made in each case to give effect to this international obligation. So that in the United States, relevant national law with respect to the biological, brackets, crimes against humanity, brackets, convention, would be made in the Congress, requiring companies dealing in substances or knowledge related to biological weapons to report, to behave in accordance with the crimes against humanity law and to report regularly to the United States' authorities on attempts made to acquire from them prohibited substances or processes. And that under the means of verification of the treaty concerned, the BW Crimes Against Humanity Treaty, of course, some of these organizations would be the subject, periodically, under an enhanced verification system of challenge inspection or regular inspection, etcetera.
Now, is this all very heavy? You bet. Is it pie in the sky? Absolutely not. You ask yourself what's at stake here and it's a piece of cake. I'm mixing up my pies, obviously. (Laughter.) It's easy. It's easy in comparison with the downside. We have it in the pharmaceutical industry, an industry which is replete with poisons which we dish out in small doses because then they're good for you. But it's controlled adequately and I don't think, is there, a substantial black market or criminal market in pharmaceuticals? It can be done. is there? In the Third World, right? Or here? Well, maybe I'm wrong about that. I believe it can be done, but I believe above all, that any sensible analysis of the costs and deficits means that we must assume, as part of our national and international life that as we move ahead into the wonders of biology and biotechnology, that we take with us this small additional cost, this small add-on that will keep us safe.
If anyone says to me that it's too complex, these tiny little kitchen size laboratories that are going to spring up all over the world doing all kinds of extraordinary things, it's just too big, it's too complex. Anyone who says that therefore we should walk away, we can't do it, we just have to see where it all lands, we'll get robust disagreement from me. I will never agree to that solution. It is better to try to get this done, even though there will be failures than to simply walk away. I think to fail to do something that is right simply because it's hard is the lousiest possible reason for failing to do something that is right. The other difficulties are well known to you, above all to you. Immensely difficult because of the ubiquitous nature and the (Inaudible) nature of the technologies involved. The other significant difficulty in taking the high road in arms control is that it always involves some self-denial. It always does. If we were to push others to do this, we will have to do it ourselves. Talk about maintaining a capability as a deterrent would not be on, indeed a symmetrical deterrence which I think is a bogus idea would need to be addressed. And if we push others to do these things, they will extract a price from us, whether it's a financial price as the North Koreans are now charging us for not making missiles and a bomb or the Russians clearly would want compensations, politically and economically in other ways. There is some self-denial involved, but the benefits of going this route exceed the cost that we would pay. The ultimate self-denial is to throw away the over used idea and I've heard it all my life in arms control, not to say it explicitly, but repeatedly, is that arms control is absolutely great, terrific idea, as long as it's for the other fellow. That's the ultimate self-denial that we would have to accept. So my answer to the problem that you set me tonight, what do we do about international control of biological weapons is outlined far too long. I apologize for that, but necessarily sketchily in what I've just said to you. In a nutshell it involves refusing to give up on something that is immensely complex, simply because it's hard, insisting on doing something that is right because to fail to do it could be a complete disaster. And I ask you in considering the idea of going the whole distance and calling biological weapons by their proper name which is a crime against humanity, I'm asking that we take the high route, set the bar higher, leap over all those crummy arguments that we used to have with the Iraqis about barrels of growth media. As I said to Terik Aziz (Phonetic.) forget that, just show us the weapons, that's what we want. Take that approach. Leap over, not ignore, but set a whole new context for managing the detail by going to the top and saying these things are utterly inadmissable. They constitute a crime against humanity and we will therefore do all the things that flow from that. Thank you very much.
(Applause.) |
