The Report of the Iraq Inquiry

33. Nuclear, chemical and biological weapons are all subject to arms control regimes:

• the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which entered

into force in 1970, requires non‑nuclear weapons states to agree not to seek

to acquire nuclear weapons; and

• the 1975 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC)13 and the 1997

Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) prohibit the development, production

and stockpiling of the respective sets of weapons.

34. Iraq signed the BTWC in 1972, but did not ratify it. It did not sign the CWC until

2009. One important difference between the two conventions is that the BTWC has no

effective enforcement mechanisms while the CWC does.

35. Iraq has never been a member of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR).14

13 The BTWC reaffirms the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which prohibits use of biological and toxin weapons.

14 The MTCR was established in 1987 to prevent the proliferation of unmanned systems capable of

delivering weapons of mass destruction. It is an informal and voluntary association that seeks members’

adherence to common export policy guidelines (the MTCR Guidelines) applied to a common list of

controlled goods.