Belarus
Practice Relating to Rule 73. Biological Weapons
Belarus’s Criminal Code (1999) provides that “production, acquisition, stockpiling, transport, transfer or sale of weapons of mass destruction prohibited by international treaties binding upon the Republic of Belarus” is a criminal offence, while the use of such weapons is a war crime.
In 1970, in the context of the adoption of UN General Assembly Resolution 2444 (XXIII), Belarus stated:
The need for all States without exception to abide, in any armed conflict, by the existing international conventions defining and limiting the means, ways and methods of waging war assumes particular importance. Among these conventions are … the Geneva [Gas] Protocol of 1925.
In the preliminary stages of the First Review Conference of States Parties to the Biological Weapons Convention in 1980, Belarus ensured “the fulfilment of undertakings assumed by it under articles I, II, III, and IV, and also under the relevant parts of the preamble of the [1972 Biological Weapons Convention]”.
In 1993, during a debate in the First Committee of the UN General Assembly, Belarus referred to a declaration in which all States which had emerged from the Soviet Union had expressed support for biological disarmament.