ISLAMABAD, 25 April 2003 — It was sensational stuff. All newspaper-reading and television-watching Pakistanis feverishly wondered why, out of the blue, there would be this inspection by a team from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The entire day telephones rang in newspaper and television offices. Was Pakistan next, after all?
Bound by the procedures, Pakistan could not go public with the information, so all day speculation ran riot in the capital. The countries are drawn by computer ballot by the inspecting organization, which is based in the Hague. The procedure was established in 1993 and 1,400 such inspections have already been carried out. This will be Pakistan’s first. Most of the inspections have been carried out in Western industrialized countries.
Under the procedure, countries which have to be inspected are only informed 120 hours before the physical inspection starts, and inspectors will be arriving in Pakistan on April 29. The OPCW also requires that host governments do not publicize the arrival of the inspectors. However, in this era of complete information proliferation it is difficult to keep such important news under wraps.
Chemical industries whose technology can have a dual purpose and thus be used for making chemical weapons qualify for this inspection. The industries which fall in this category also include pesticides and fertilizer industries. Pakistan has only about nine such industries.
India meanwhile has gone through over 100 OPCW inspections. Its case is also interesting because when it signed the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) in January 1993, it declared itself a chemical-weapons-free country.
In August 1992 Indian Foreign Secretary J.N. Dixit signed with his Pakistani counterpart Shehryar M. Khan a bilateral declaration prohibiting development, production or acquisition of chemical weapons. While signing the CWC and the bilateral declaration with Pakistan one month after ratifying the CWC in 1996, India announced that it was in possession of 1,000 to 2,000 tons of chemical weapons.
In response to the Indian disclosure, these weapons were sealed by OPCW authorities. Under the supervision of OPCW the destruction of the Indian chemical weapons will be completed by 2007.
Thus within a month of signing the CWC, India effectively declared that it did possess chemical weapons after all.
Pakistan too is a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention. At present there are 151 member states of the OPCW, which came into existence on April 29, 1997.
It aims to achieve four principal objectives: The elimination of chemical weapons and the capacity to develop them, the verification of non-proliferation, international assistance and protection in the event of the use or threat of use of chemical weapons, and international cooperation and assistance in the peaceful use of chemistry. The continuing expansion of the membership of the organization confirms the international community’s trust in and commitment to a non-discriminatory, multilateral mechanism to eliminate and ban chemical weapons forever.
At a time when the United States with its two supporters, the UK and Australia, invaded and occupied Iraq on the pretext of locating and destroying what now appear to be non-existent WMDs including chemical weapons, any talk of weapons inspections naturally raises fear and apprehension. Fortunately, in Pakistan’s case this fear appears unfounded.
Pakistan, its government says, welcomes the inspection from an organization whose vision is “of a world free of chemical weapons, and a world in which cooperation in the peaceful uses of chemistry is fostered. In doing this, our ultimate aim is to contribute to international security and stability, general and complete disarmament, and global economic development.”
