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Experts gathered in Geneva for an annual meeting of the Biological Weapons Convention have called for stricter powers to enforce the treaty as the Covid-19 pandemic heightens global awareness of biological threats.
“The pandemic has vividly illustrated that the inevitable uncertainty surrounding the origin of biological events can fuel speculation and mistrust that can have cascading global effects,” academics and research institutes, including the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and the UK nonprofit VERTIC, said Monday in a joint statement at the start of the eight-day meeting, which was attended by representatives of the 183-member BWC and biological weapons experts.
“The BWC is well positioned to establish a trusted clearinghouse for the collection and analysis of information related to the origin of significant biological events,” they added.
Twenty months after the identification of the first cases of Covid-19 in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the origins of the virus remain hotly debated. A World Health Organization fact-finding mission to the city in January 2021 was inconclusive and has been criticized for gaining limited access to Chinese facilities and data.
A US intelligence investigation ordered by President Joe Biden in May to find out whether Sars-Cov-2 – the virus that causes Covid-19 – appeared naturally or could have leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology was unsuccessful to come to a final conclusion. Beijing has rejected any suggestion of the lab leak.
Diplomatic sensitivities would prevent any formal reference to the so-called laboratory leak theory at the Geneva conference, but Chinese officials’ reluctance to give more access to inspectors undermines confidence in Beijing’s commitment to the BWC said Filippa Lentzos, a social scientist at King’s College London who studies threats from biological agents.
“The whole saga will have implications for confidence in China’s commitments, but none of this will be released publicly,” said Lentzos, who will be attending the meeting.
Signatories to the Biological Weapons Convention, comprising both governments and independent experts, meet regularly under UN auspices to review the text of the treaty. The convention prohibits the development, stockpiling, transfer and use of biological weapons but does not include formal measures to ensure compliance by member states.
It covers dual-use research – technology that can be used for defensive or offensive purposes – but gives governments leeway. The conduct of such activity for offensive military purposes is prohibited, while research and development for defense or prophylaxis purposes is permitted.
While there is no evidence that Sars-Cov-2 emerged from a research center rather than naturally, experts are calling for a global mechanism to provide independent, transparent and accredited fact-checking of major biological events.
They argue that little is known about biological research conducted by different governments because the BWC is too low. When the convention was drawn up, James Leonard, the chief negotiator of the United States, described it as a “gentleman’s agreement”.
Andy Weber, assistant defense secretary for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs under President Barack Obama, said the convention had no mechanism for enforcing or verifying and inspecting biological research.
“There was an effort in the late 1990s, early 2000s, to add a verification provision based on the success of the Chemical Weapons Convention, which has very good verification and inspection capabilities. . . . but it was blocked, mainly by the United States, ”he said.
Staff at the Wuhan Institute have in the past expressed concerns about some of the research being done there, especially where it may have overlapped with work by the Chinese military.
During a December 2011 panel hosted by the US government’s National Institutes of Health, Yuan Zhiming, a microbiologist at the Wuhan Institute, warned, “In China, there are no regulations on the identification of dual-use search, and there are no regulations on the search classification and classification of information.
There were “very legitimate questions about the dual use of what they are doing in this [Wuhan] installation, but again, that doesn’t imply that they’re necessarily doing something in violation of the BWC, ”Lentzos said.
“What is legitimate is to draw attention to Chinese military involvement in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, both in terms of leadership, in terms of co-author on publications, in terms funding for all of these things, which is a lot of things we don’t know and the Chinese aren’t very open or transparent about it.
The Wuhan Institute did not respond to a request for comment.
China’s Foreign Ministry told the Financial Times it remains committed to protecting the convention and said the United States undermined efforts to establish a biological weapons inspection mechanism when it withdrew from the U.S. talks in the early 2000s on expanding the powers of the BWC following concerns from US pharmaceutical groups. .
“Since the United States thinks it is convenient to inspect the Wuhan laboratories, then they have no reason to object [such a mechanism] and has even less reason to reject inspections of Fort Detrick, ”the ministry said, referring to the headquarters of the US Army Infectious Disease Institute for Medical Research in Maryland.
In response to calls for an independent inspection from the Wuhan Institute, China has repeatedly suggested, without providing credible evidence, that the Sars-Cov-2 may have come from the US facility.
“Fort Detrick retains a large number of viruses that pose a serious threat to human security, and there are many security risks and loopholes at Fort Detrick,” a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said at a press conference in June.
Additional reporting Christian Shepherd in Beijing