NEWS OF THE WEEK
CHEMICAL WEAPONS TREATY Congress gets implementing legislation A fter many grueling hours of inter/ % agency debate and months later J L J L than the Administration had intended, the Arms Control & Disarmament Agency (ACDA) finally has sent Congress draft legislation to implement the chemical weapons treaty. Several treaty provisions require passage of legislation to give them legal force in the U.S. Enactment by Congress of the Administration's bill will: • Allow international inspections of U.S. facilities (civilian and governmental). • Permit the government to collect treaty-mandated information from U.S. industries, especially chemical firms. • Establish a National Authority—the collection point for all industry data—to serve as the liaison between the U.S. and the international organization set up by the treaty to enforce the accord. Legislation is also needed to make the pact's provisions outlawing possession, production, use, storage, or transfer of chemical weapons binding on U.S. individuals and corporations and to estab-
Milestones on road to treaty ratification • U.S. signed chemical weapons treaty in Paris on Jan. 13,1993. • President Bill Clinton sent treaty to the Senate for its advice and consent on Nov. 23,1993. A resolution of ratification must be agreed to by two thirds of the Senators present on the floor. • Arms Control & Disarmament Agency sent treaty's implementing legislation to Congress on May 27. Implementing legislation requires the approval of a simple majority of both houses. • An approved treaty and its implementing legislation will be returned to the President, whose signature ratifies the treaty and requires the U.S. to abide by its provisions. • Optimistic target date for U.S. ratification: late July. 6
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lish a series of civil and criminal penalties for those who engage in prohibited activities. After Congress enacts the implementing legislation and the Senate approves the treaty by a two-thirds vote, both documents will be sent to the President for his signature. His signature ratifies the treaty and binds the U.S. to the treaty's provisions. TTie White House is hoping Congress will transmit the documents in July, but most Carpenter (above): minimal knowledgeable observers regulatory burden; Gaffney: expect the date to slip a bit. agreement not verifiable IXiring the bill's drafting, the interagency group, headed by ACDA, draft bill. But he expressed CMA's conconsulted with staff from relevant Con- cern about how the bill will be implegressional committees and with represen- mented by the various federal agencies tatives from industry. Attorney Michael P. charged with carrying it out. "If the final Walls, the Chemical Manufacturers Asso- regulatory package reflects the general ciation's (CMA) resident chemical weap- intent of the draft legislation, the potenons expert, says, "In general, the draft tial regulatory burden on, and intrusion legislation reflects input from industry into, commercial facilities should be and tries to address some of industry's minimal," he told the hearing. concerns." However, he says, "There are As delivered to Congress, however, some areas—including the penalty pro- the bill contains no provisions to ensure visions—that need additional attention consistency of regulations across U.S. in the legislative process." agencies. Further, "there are no proviThomas X. White, associate vice presi- sions requiring the U.S. government to dent for manufacturing and quality con- adopt the regulatory mechanisms being trol at the Pharmaceutical Research & developed in The Hague" to implement Manufacturers of America, says his or- the treaty, Carpenter noted. And as the ganization "doesn't oppose the legisla- Commerce Department is likely to astion. We think the U.S. should provide sume responsibility for industry's comsufficient protection to industry so that pliance with the treaty, the department implementation of the treaty doesn't cre- stressed the need for giving Commerce ate unnecessary burdens ... or compro- ample resources—both dollars and mise confidential business information. staff—to carry out its new responsibility. Also, reporting and inspection regimes In short, Carpenter tells C&EN, "indusshould be as nonintrusive as possible." try wants the domestic legislation to parallel, and not expand beyond, the needs White's concerns echo those of CMA. In recent testimony on behalf of CMA of the treaty." The hearing was held to receive public before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Will D. Carpenter, chairman comment-4x)th pro and con—on treaty of CMA's chemical weapons work ratification. Making a case for not ratifying group, reiterated the organization's sup- the treaty were two Reagan Administraport for the treaty and, in general, for the tion officials: Frank J. Gaffney Jr., former
acting assistant defense secretary, and Kathleen Bailey, former ACDA assistant director. They argued that the agreement is not verifiable, the U.S. can't trust the Russians to abide by its terms, and the accord's impact on industry is unduly burdensome and costly. Countering these contentions—though most observers say not too effectively— were two Bush Administration officials: Ronald F. Lehman, former ACDA director, and Michael L. Moodie, former assistant ACDA director for multilateral affairs. Both urged ratification, arguing the accord will serve the cause of deterrence. Bailey contended that "Monies spent on verification will be wasted... and the inspection regime runs a high risk of jeopardizing U.S. national security and costing U.S. industry dearly." Gaffney further argued that the treaty "will inevitably degrade the readiness and effectiveness of our defensive posture vis-àvis chemical attack." Using interesting logic, Gaffney and Bailey seemed to imply that since most of affected industry is unaware of the terms of the treaty, the pact shouldn't be ratified. Carpenter responded that CMA and ACDA are busy informing industry of its obligations and burdens, and when so instructed most then agree that the risks and costs are manageable. On the side of approval, Amy E. Smithson, senior associate at the Henry L. Stimson Center, a Washington-based public policy center, told the hearing, "The need to face the problem of chemical weapons proliferation, the merits of the [treaty], and the lack of feasible alternatives all point to one rational course of action on the part of the U.S. Senateratification of this treaty. Critics of this [treaty] have complaints, but they have no practical alternatives." Carpenter tells C&EN the national security issues opponents raise, which have little to do with industry, "are issues that should be raised and resolved." An administration official who asks not to be named says those issues will be addressed "by very senior Administration officials at an open Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing [possibly this week] and at a yet unscheduled Senate Armed Services panel hearing." This official says the President has made his support for the treaty very clear. "Bringing the [treaty] into force is one of the central elements of our nonproliferation policy." Lois Ember
'Wires' of nanometer dimensions developed In work with potential applicability to the design of nanoscale electronic devices, researchers have developed a conductive molecular "wire" of near-molecular dimensions. The work by postdoctoral associate Chun-Guey Wu and chemistry professor Thomas Bein of Purdue University, West Lafayette, Ind., was reported in last week's Science [264,1757 (1994)]. Work on molecular-scale wires has been motivated by efforts to increase computing speed and storage density by d e veloping miniaturized components— ultimately of molecular size. But a nagging conceptual problem has been the question of how molecular electronic devices can be made and how they can communicate with conventional circuits. Several groups have been working on this problem. For example, chemistry professor Charles R. Martin and coworkers at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, have devised polypyrrole wires with diameters of 30 ran that have the added benefit of being about 10 times more conductive than bulk polypyrrole [Chem. Mater., 3, 960 (1991)]. In unpublished work, they have since made smaller wires. And Michael J. Sailor and coworkers at the University of California, San Diego, recently reported the synthesis of random filamentary networks of con-
ducting polymer between electrodes in solution [Science, 262, 2014 (1993)]. Nanowires have also been produced by deposition of metals and semiconductors in the pores of membranes. Wu and Bein have moved a step closer to molecular-scale electronics by producing conducting filaments only a few molecules thick. The polyaniline filaments are essentially 3 nm wide because they are formed inside the channels of an aluminosilicate crystal with 3-nm-diameter pores. To make the filaments, aniline molecules are adsorbed into the pores of the crystal and then polymerized with ammonium peroxydisulfate. Microwave absorption measurements show that the filaments have significant conductivity—although only about one fourth that of bulk polyaniline. In earlier work, Bein's group synthe sized single polymer molecules in zeolite channels, but these were not conductive. The larger aluminosilicate channels used in the current work accommodate seven to 10 polymer chains. "The change to 3-nm-diameter pores was critical in allowing the transverse coupling between chains to increase the conductivity significantly," says Bein. Asked to comment on the work, Martin says, "The general concept is that you can take a membrane [or crystal] that has
Conductive 'wires' are made by polymerizing aniline in nanometer channels
Oxidation with (NH 4 ) 2 S 2 0 8
Note: Carbon atoms are blue, nitrogen atoms are red. Adapted with permission of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; copyright 1994.
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