Alison Dellit
In the first week of June, the German cabinet decided to equip the army with "riot control agents" when abroad. Article 1 of the Chemical Weapons Convention explicitly prohibits the use of "riot control agents as a method of warfare". Until now, Germany has abided fully by the CWC.
In order to do this, the German government must alter its law for CWC implementation. The parliament must approve the law, which is unlikely to happen before it breaks for the summer.
According to the web site of the Sunshine Project, a non-profit organisation working in the US and Germany: "The German government's new position comes in a fragile international situation in which the development and use of so-called 'non-lethal' chemical weapons such as tear gas or anaesthetic compounds is increasingly seen as a major danger to global chemical disarmament."
Some governments have already "reinterpreted" the CWC's Article 1 prohibitions, in particular the term "warfare". The US government is trying to stretch the definition of "riot control agent" to allow it to develop psychoactive and anaesthetic compounds for weapons use.
The German decision was influenced by corporate media debate of the German army's handling of clashes in Kosovo in March. However, the Sunshine Project pointed out that in the incident in question, the troops had chosen not to use the non-lethal weapons they had because of the danger of harming women and children.
[For more information, visit sunshine-project.org.]
From Green Left Weekly, June 30, 2004.
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