The CQ Researcher : Chemical and Biological Weapons

From the January 31, 1997 issue of The CQ Researcher, Volume 7, No. 4, p. 85.

Chronology

1910s-1920s
The first use of chemical and biological weapons in combat leads to efforts to ban their use.

April 22, 1915
The first use of chemical weapons in combat occurs in World War I when Germany releases chlorine gas onto the battlefield near Ypres, Belgium. Two years later, Germany launches mustard gas attacks as well. By the war's end, the death toll from chemical weapons approaches 100,000 people.

1925
The Geneva Protocol prohibits the use of biological and chemical weapons in war. The United States signs, but fails to ratify, the treaty.

1950s-1970s
As the United States and the Soviet Union build arsenals of biological and chemical weapons, international pressure mounts to draw up new treaties to curb such weapons.

Nov. 25, 1969
President Richard M. Nixon unilaterally renounces the use of biological weapons in war by the United States and restricts research to immunization and safety efforts. Three months later, he extends the ban to include toxins.

1972
The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention enters into force, banning the production and stockpiling of these weapons.

Jan. 22, 1975
The United States ratifies the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention as well as the 1925 Geneva Protocol.

April 1979
An outbreak of anthrax occurs in Sverdlovsk, Russia. The incident, initially described as a natural outbreak, is later found to be the result of a leak from a Soviet biological-weapons facility.

1980s
Arms control initiatives fail to curb biological and chemical weapons proliferation.

1980-88
Iraq uses chemical weapons in its eight-year war against Iran as well as against dissident Kurdish communities in Iraq - the first use of chemical agents in combat since World War I.

1984
The Reagan administration presents a draft treaty to ban the production and storage of chemical weapons to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.

1990s
Concern over exposure to chemical and biological weapons during the Persian Gulf War increases support for international treaties.

May 13, 1991
Shortly after the allied victory against Iraq, President George Bush announces that the United States will renounce the use of chemical weapons for any reason once an international treaty banning them takes effect.

April 1992
Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin declares that Russia's biological weapons programs is being discontinued.

January 1993
President Bush signs the Chemical Weapons Convention banning the production and use of chemical weapons.

March 20, 1995
In the first terrorist attack using chemical weapons, members of Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese religious cult, release sarin nerve gas in the Tokyo subway, killing 12 people and injuring more than 5,000.

1995
Larry Harris, a white supremacist from Ohio, obtains three vials of deadly plague bacteria by mail order from a laboratory supply house. Alleged white supremacist Thomas Lewis Lavy is apprehended while trying to smuggle the toxin ricin across the Canadian border.

Jan. 7, 1997
The Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses finds no conclusive evidence linking Gulf War Syndrome to exposure to chemical or biological weapons.

April 15, 1997
New regulations aimed at limiting access to chemicals and pathogens that could be made into weapons go into effect under the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act.

April 29, 1997
The Chemical Weapons Convention goes into effect. As of late January, it had more than 160 signatories and 65 ratifications.