The nation's top spies and soldiers say the Senate should ratify a new global chemical arms ban treaty - even though they believe Russia is developing new chemical weapons and couldn't destroy its existing stockpile in time to comply with the treaty.
"The sooner we have the Chemical Weapons Convention, the sooner we get to the bottom of this" by forcing better disclosure and allowing challenge inspections, Gen. John M. Shalikashvili told the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee Thursday.He said the Russians likely could not destroy their 40,000 tons of chemical weapons within 10 years, as the treaty requires. He said the United States can do that easily with its stockpile - 42 percent of which is stored at Utah's Tooele Army Depot.
Central Intelligence Agency Director R. James Woolsey also said a Russian scientist, Vil Mirzayanov, has warned that the Russians are continuing to develop new "binary" chemical arms, which combine two safe chemicals to form deadly nerve agent.
Woolsey said the CIA is concerned that Russia is submitting data required by previous agreements that is "incomplete and contradictory," which may back up Mirzayanov's charges.
Such charges of new chemical weapons have circulated for months and had been mentioned in previous hearings and Deseret News stories about them. They were the focus of a major New York Times story Thursday.
Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., ranking Republican on the committee, suggested slowing down ratification of the treaty until Russia is more forthcoming - but Woolsey and Shalikashvili said that would be a mistake.
They said the treaty would legally force Russia to provide more information, which could help disclose any problems - and allow challenge inspections to help verify them.
"We are better off having disputes about data and getting it ironed out than to have no treaty," Woolsey said.
He said it also creates international pressure against use of chemical weapons - which would help Russian parliamentarians to also ratify the treaty. And it may encourage others like Mirzayanov to report violations if they occur.
Shalikashvili said Russia would also likely make greater efforts to destroy its stockpile sooner rather than later with the treaty in force - and other nations would have more incentive to help it accomplish that.
The two noted that regardless whether the treaty is signed, America will destroy its chemical weapons and deter attacks by others by pledging swift and overwhelming response by other forms of weaponry. So they say America can only gain by a treaty that would require others to do the same.
John Hollum, director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, warned that if the United States doesn't ratify the treaty and soon, the arms ban may die.
"Other nations are watching us," he said. The treaty has been signed by 157 nations, but only eight have ratified it. At least 65 must ratify before it enters into force.
He said if the chemical arms treaty is scuttled, work on a similar ban on biological weapons would also likely die. Utah's Dugway Proving Ground has historically been one of the key facilities that works on germ warfare defenses.