Chemical arms pact gets aid from "down under" Australia has offered a complete text to a chemical weapons treaty long under negotiation in Geneva. Many delega­tions to the Conference on Disarma­ment think it will lead to a final treaty, possibly as early as mid-year.

An unprecedented number of dele­gations—23, including the U.S.—made statements welcoming the effort as a basis for furthering negotiations, al­though most cited reservations on cer­tain points. Still others, such as the French, unofficially say they could vote for the Australian text today.

The conference has been working for nearly 20 years on a global treaty to ban the production, stockpiling, transfer, and use of chemical weapons. The fruit of its efforts is something called a rolling text. Hundreds of pages long, the rolling text is loaded with footnotes and bracketed phrases of controversial and/or contest­ed information. Fully 80% of the Austra­lian document is the rolling text.

What the Australians did, a U.S. ex­pert explains, was "straighten out and streamline the rolling text, eliminating redundancies and settling small, but contested points, to produce a clean text/' A simple matter, one would think. But this expert says, "it would have tak­en the conference a year to do the same thing." Australia's effort has prompted "an important, essential change in the psychology here," he adds. "There is a sense that the negotiations are moving into a different phase, where trade-offs will predominate."

When Australian Foreign Affairs Min­ister Gareth Evans presented the text, he said it was "not an alternative to the roll­ing text." Rather, it was "an accelerated refinement" of it, to serve as a basis for expeditiously transforming the rolling text into a final treaty.

Verifying compliance, a sticky con­ference issue, is the heart of an effective treaty. The Australians produced a ver­ification annex containing the terms for routine inspections of facilities produc­ing chemicals covered by the treaty, and for challenge inspections of any fa­cilities suspected of violating the treaty.

The Australians expanded the scope of routine inspections to cover facilities producing so-called Schedule 3 "dual-use" chemicals and other relevant facili­ties. Previously these facilities—which produce commercially used chemicals,

sometimes in large volume, that can also be precursors to chemical weapons— were required only to report manufac­turing data. On challenge inspections, the Australians reduced timelines (from arrival time of the inspection team to ac­tual on-site inspection), improved mea­sures for securing the site, and strength­ened so-called managed access proce­dures, among other things.

Chemical Manufacturers Association attorney Michael P. Walls says, "The Australian draft provides an excellent basis for further negotiations." But CMA believes the scope of inspections for Schedule 3 and other relevant chemical facilities "is still too narrow. There is de­terrence and confidence-building value in casting a net to capture all plants."

The U.S. government, however, would like the Australian net to be nar­rower. "It is broader than we would like because we are trying to protect chemi­cal sensitive activities taking place at in­dustrial sites," says a U.S. arms control official. Another U.S. arms control expert is reluctant to say whether the Austra­lian challenge inspection text is accept­able to the U.S., which offered its own language last July. "We are reviewing our challenge inspection position, and there will probably be changes in that position," he says.

On other matters of concern to in­dustry, Australia proposes language banning draconian export control re­strictions that could thwart technologi­cal development. It also offers a confi­dentiality annex to protect chemical in­dustry from industrial espionage.

Lois Ember

Document leaks inflame NIH-Dingell dispute The bitter feud over NIH's beleaguered scientific misconduct office is escalating between powerful Rep. John D. Dingell (D.-Mich.) and National Institutes of Health director Bernadine P. Healy.

Healy has asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation to delve into leaks of confidential documents from the Office of Scientific Integrity (OSI), claiming they are illegal acts that are destroying OSI and endangering NIH.

Dingell, meanwhile, labels the FBI probe of present and former OSI em­ployees "harassment and intimidation aimed at courageous, public-spirited

Healy: support for NIH jeopardized

whistleblowers." In a March 19 letter to Heal/s boss, Health & Human Services Secretary Louis W. Sullivan, Dingell im­plies the criminal investigation is retalia­tion against OSI employees who alerted his subcommittee that OSI documents it wanted to see were being destroyed. Dingell chairs the House Committee on Energy & Commerce, and its Oversight & Investigations Subcommittee.

OSI has been the focus of controversy since its creation in 1989 in response to charges from Congress that NIH was mishandling scientific misconduct cases. Last summer, Dingell accused Healy of

demoralizing OSFs staff and un­dermining its work (C&EN, Aug. 12, 1991, page 4). Healy said she was legitimately trying to correct problems in the office.

Breaches of confidentiality are one of the most serious of those problems, Healy says. Last year, OSFs draft report about Nobel Laureate David Baltimore and his former coworker, Thereza Iman-ishi-Kari, was leaked to the press. More recently, details of NIH's in­vestigation of AIDS researcher Robert J. Gallo became public.

'These unauthorized disclo­sures have contributed to dam­age to reputations and have cre­ated an atmosphere of trial by media, based upon inaccurate, in­complete, and distorted informa-

MARCH 30,1992 C&EN 5