Probe urged into US-led Ukraine biolabs

Investigation needed to assess if facilities violate weapons convention, ex-UN inspector says

GENEVA — A former United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq has stressed that it is necessary to investigate the alleged US-led biolabs in Ukraine to ensure they are operated within the framework set forth by the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, or BTWC.

“There is an absolute requirement for stringent confidence-building investigations into what the United States was doing, so that the world can be confident that the United States operates within the framework” of the BTWC, said Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq and former US Marine Corps Intelligence officer, in a recent interview with Xinhua.

Ritter believes the biolabs present on Ukrainian soil are, beyond any doubt, led by the US.

“They are US-led biolabs, that’s not up for debate. They may be on Ukrainian soil, they may be operated by Ukrainian scientists, but they operate in accordance with the 2005 memorandum signed between the Ukrainian government and the United States Department of Defense under legislation that’s called NunnLugar Act,” he said.

The act is part of the cooperative threat reduction legislation passed by the US Congress in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union to bring WMD, or weapons of mass destruction, capability under control in the chaos that followed.

For Ritter, the US-led program appears “very responsible on the surface” as it was in the US interest to ensure that these Soviet-era programs were in fact closed down.

However, “the problem with the United States ... is that we operate on a different set of rules, so to speak, than we then have others abide by.”

“This very footloose and fancy-free approach, I believe, infected the legitimate intent of the Ukrainian labs,” Ritter said, referring to those socalled level-three safety labs built by the US in Ukraine to carry out what they claim to be legitimate biological research, and on occasion, “defensive biological warfare research.”

Ritter drew special attention to 26 of these labs, which he said “is something the United States probably needs to answer for.”

“I also don’t understand how programs as have been alleged by the Russians could be allowed to exist,” he said, citing Russian claims that one such program focuses on the development of the weaponization of bird flu H1N1 that can be vectored or delivered by migratory birds flying from Ukraine into Russia.

It is just so “problematic about this program that suggests that it isn’t done for benevolent purposes, that there is malfeasance attached, which makes it not a defensive program but an offensive program and this is a great concern,” he said.

Ritter contends that the 2001 US sole veto to the Additional Protocol of the BTWC, for whatever alleged reason, must be overcome to install a mandatory monitoring mechanism to assure the relevance of the global binding legal instrument.

“The United States, unfortunately ... we can’t be trusted anymore, the world can no longer accept at face value an American contention that we’re doing nothing wrong,” he said.

On March 10, the Russian Ministry of Defense said that US-funded biolabs in Ukraine worked on “covert transmission” of pathogens including African Swine Fever which would wreak havoc on food sources.

“We know that the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) has done this (using bioweapons to covertly starve populations) in the past, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the CIA is considering doing it in the future,” cautioned Ritter.

“This is why it’s imperative that we have intrusive inspection capabilities to verify that this kind of activity is not taking place,” he said.