| |
|
Chemical weapons were also extensively used by both sides during the Iran-Iraq War and are believed to have been used by Iraq against Kurdish civilian populations.
The use of chemical weapons is generally abhored in international law, and there are many rules to discourage or make difficult their acquisition and use. Of these the most important is the Chemical Weapons Convention.
Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical weapons were usually considered morally equivalent and referred to collectively by the phrase "NBC weapons", until this phrase was replaced by weapons of mass destruction, due to confusion about the line between chemical and biological weapons (e.g. prions which are not organisms but simple single-molecule proteins, and could thereby be considered either chemical or biological), concerns about genetic manipulation of biological entities, or nanotechnological methods to generate new molecules with lifelike characteristics, or to exude dangerous chemicals, and the danger of weapons using artificial intelligence and robotics, all of which could conceivably get beyond human control.
By comparison to these threats, the danger of chemical weapons is not considered to be extreme. Even such potential attacks as poisoning of an urban center's water supply (very common in the history of warfare) with a chemical agent, e.g. botulin, are assumed to be containable.
A UN working group began work on chemical disarmament in 1980. On April 4, 1984 President Ronald Reagan called for an international ban on chemical weapons. The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) was signed in 1993 and came into effect in 1997. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons declared that at the end of 2003, 8000 metric tons of chemical agent had been destroyed worldwide from a declared stockpile of 70,000 metric tons. For its part, by 2003, the United States had destroyed 23% of its total chemical arsenal, although doubts existed whether it could reach total elimination by the treaty deadline of 2012 due to technical difficulties and environmental regulations. India, South Korea, Russia are destroying chemical weapons stockpiles under the CWC and Libya dismantled its program under other means. The U.S. has declared that it believes that Russia is circumventing the treaty by developing novel chemical agents. In addition, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Sudan, Syria, Taiwan, Yugoslavia are suspected of possessing chemical weapons.[1]