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Message to the Senate Transmitting the Convention on the Marking of Plastic Explosives for Detection

June 29, 1993

To the Senate of the United States:

I transmit herewith, for the advice and consent of the Senate to ratification, the Convention on the Marking of Plastic Explosives for the Purpose of Detection with Technical Annex, done at Montreal on March 1, 1991. The report of the Department of State is also enclosed for the information of the Senate.

The terrorist bombing of Pan Am 103 in December 1988 with the resultant deaths of 270 (including 189 Americans), and the terrorist bombing of UTA flight 772 in September 1989 with the resultant deaths of 171 (including 7 Americans), dramatically demonstrate the threat posed by virtually undetectable plastic explosives in the hands of those nations and groups that engage in terrorist savagery.

This Convention is aimed at precluding such incidents from recurring, as well as others where plastic explosives are utilized, by requiring States that produce plastic explosives to mark them at the time of manufacture with a substance to enhance their detectability by commercially available mechanical or canine detectors. States are also required to ensure that controls are implemented over the sale, use, and disposition of marked and unmarked plastic explosives.

Work on the Convention began in January 1990 tinder the auspices of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) on the basis of an initial draft prepared by a special subcommittee of the ICAO Legal Committee. That work was completed, and the Convention was adopted by consensus, at an international conference in Montreal in March 1991. The United States and 50 other States signed the Convention. Early ratification by the United States should encourage other nations to become party to the Convention.

I recommend that the Senate give early and favorable consideration to the Convention and give its advice and consent to ratification, subject to the declaration described in the accompanying report of the Secretary of State.

WILLIAM J. CLINTON

The White House,

June 29, 1993.

William J. Clinton, Message to the Senate Transmitting the Convention on the Marking of Plastic Explosives for Detection Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/220772

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