President Bush is poised to reject a new treaty enforcing a ban on germ weapons, a move that will cause considerable concern among the United States' European allies. President Bush is poised to reject a new treaty enforcing a ban on germ weapons, a move that will cause considerable concern among the United States' European allies. After six years of negotiations, diplomats in Geneva have produced a draft protocol that would establish measures to monitor the three-decade-old germ weapon ban. A total of 143 countries have ratified the 1972 treaty banning the development of biological weapons but there has always been a problem with monitoring and enforcing the agreement.American support for the enforcement protocol is seen as essential to its success. The Clinton administration considered the new protocol as an important tool in stopping the development of germ weapons, including agents such as anthrax and smallpox.But a review of the protocol by Mr Bush's team has concluded that it would be ineffective in stopping those nations that wished to ignore it and that there was not enough time to correct the draft's failings. As a result, it seems that Mr Bush is certain not to agree to it.This week the Hungarian UN diplomat Tibor Toth, who has overseen efforts to negotiate the new protocol, will travel to Washington in an effort to persuade the Bush administration to change its view.The first step to ban germ weapons was the 1925 Geneva Convention. In 1972, President Richard Nixon and other world leaders signed the current treaty. The fact that there was no means of enforcing it became a growing concern after the Russian leader Boris Yeltsin admitted that the Soviet Union had violated the treaty by maintaining a long-standing biological weapons programme long after 1972.The Bush position is certain to cause worry in Europe where critics have already been angered by his decision not to ratify the Kyoto agreement and his backing away from the 1972 treaty on anti-ballistic missiles..
The fine sentiments and good intentions of the Mitchell Committee report yesterday echoed around the corridors of power from Washington to Jerusalem, but the reality on the ground was nothing but bleak. The fine sentiments and good intentions of the Mitchell Committee report yesterday echoed around the corridors of power from Washington to Jerusalem, but the reality on the ground was nothing but bleak.The Palestinian town of Ramallah on the West Bank yesterday was a place that had lost faith in diplomacy and was preparing for the worst. In the land around Ayosh Junction the most notorious of the killing fields fresh 5ft mounds of earth and trenches have appeared, defences in case the Israeli tanks and troops arrive in an attempt at reoccupation.And, not far away, there was a fresh monument to the steady slide to war: a white stone mansion, freshly punctured by several tank shells and helicopter missiles, and a spray of machine gun bullets.It belongs to Colonel Jibril Rajoub, the head of the Palestinian Preventive Security forces in the West Bank. Before the intifada, he was the lynch pin of Palestinian-Israeli security cooperation agreements. He was the security chief charged by Yasser Arafat and his corrupt Palestinian Authority with the task of keeping violent radical Palestinian elements in check as the Oslo peace negotiations stumbled fruitlessly on He was the smooth-talker who regularly liaised with the CIA.
But now to the anger of the United States even he has found himself in Israel's crosshairs.His expansive home one of several was attacked on Sunday afternoon, when the 48-year-old colonel was at the back of the house, talking in his gravelly tones on the telephone and preparing to go out. A helicopter fired at least two missiles into the garden wall, while tank shells demolished his front wall and punched a hole in one of the two garages.Israel has denied that it was trying to assassinate Col Rajoub one of the most senior people in Mr Arafat's inner circle. Its officials said that their soldiers had aimed at his house after shots were fired from it at their positions, which are less than a mile away. Palestinian guards at the house yesterday denied that there was any shooting from their side. But it is in a built-up area from which Palestinian gunmen regularly operate."There was no intention to hurt Mr Rajoub," said Ra'anan Gissin, Israel's leading spin doctor.
