Six countries still at large on chemical arms

[Jefferson23]

Sept. 11, 2013

By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS - If Syria eventually agrees to relinquish its stockpile of chemical arms under the 1993 international Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), what of the six other countries that have either shown reluctance or refused to join the treaty?

Currently, there are 189 states that have signed and ratified the treaty prohibiting the manufacture, use and transfer of the deadly weapons. But seven member states have been holdouts: Myanmar and Israel have signed but not ratified, while Angola, North Korea, Egypt, South Sudan and Syria have neither signed nor ratified.

If Syria agrees to accept the US-Russia proposal to abandon its weapons under the CWC, it still leaves six others outside the treaty.

A meeting of the Security Council to discuss Syria, scheduled to take place Tuesday, was cancelled without explanation.

If a resolution, inspired by Western nations, is adopted by the council later in the week, Syria is expected to agree to hand over all of its chemical weapons for storage and destruction by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) based in The Hague, Netherlands.

in full: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-01-110913.html

[Warren Stupidity]

1. The US is not in compliance.

We have missed our treaty obligation deadline to destroy our weapons.

[Jefferson23]

2. That is irrelevant.

[Mnemosyne]

3. Are we ever in compliance with any treaty? nt

[Jefferson23]

4. It's what can be expected from the US when we are not..which is not much:

International Law at Home: Enforcing Treaties in US Courts

A deep puzzle lies at the heart of international law. It is “law” binding on the United States, and yet it is not always enforceable in the courts. One of the great challenges for scholars, judges, and practitioners alike has been to make some sense of this puzzle—some might call it a paradox—and to figure out when international law can be used in U.S. courts and when it cannot.

The Supremacy Clause in the U.S. Constitution would seem to solve this puzzle. It says, after all, that “Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be supreme Law of the Land.” Yet early in the country’s history, the Supreme Court distinguished between treaties “equivalent to an act of the legislature”—and therefore enforceable in the courts—and those “the legislature should execute”—meaning they could not be enforced in the courts until implemented by Congress and the President. Thus began a cottage industry devoted to determining when international law was enforceable in the courts.

http://www.yjil.org/print/volume-37-issue-1/international-law-at-home-enforcing-treaties-in-us-courts

[Mnemosyne]

5. I have always believed we should honor anything we commit to, and am seriously

disturbed by the continuous search for loopholes. Despicable, imho.

Thanks for the info, Jefferson23.

[Jefferson23]

6. You're welcome...they're rather crafty when they need to be...shameful. n/t