Russia:  Officials Hope to Extend Destruction Deadline Incrementally

Although reports have indicated opposition to Russia’s request to extend its chemical weapons destruction deadline by five years, officials hope to at least push the deadline back in smaller increments, a Russian disarmament official said Sunday (see GSN, Sept. 24).

Members of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which oversees the Chemical Weapons Convention, are considering Russia’s proposal to extend the 2007 deadline to 2012 at a conference this week at The Hague, said Sergei Kiriyenko, chairman of the Russian state commission on chemical disarmament.

“The most likely outcome of a discussion of Russia’s proposal will be an intermediate solution,” Kiriyenko said Sunday.  “At best, the period for the program implementation will be extended stage-by-stage — at first for one year, then for another one, until the program is completed” (Roza Magasumova, ITAR-Tass, Oct. 6 in FBIS-SOV, Oct. 6).

Russia might consider withdrawing entirely from the treaty if its proposal is rejected, Gen. Nikolai Bezborodov, deputy head of the Russian state commission on chemical disarmament, said Monday (see GSN, Oct. 8; Sergei Blagov, Environment News Service, Oct. 8).

A lack of promised international aid has hindered progress on destruction activities, said Zinoviy Pak, general director of the Russian Munitions Agency and a member of the Russian delegation to the OPCW conference (see GSN, Oct. 1).

“We have never abandoned our commitments to destroy our chemical weapons arsenals,” Pak said, “but we have always said that for financial reasons we will not be able to do this on time and without help from Western countries.”

The total cost of Russia’s chemical disarmament program has been estimated at $5 billion to $6 billion, and the country has received only one-third of that amount, Pak said.  Officials plan to begin destroying 400 metric tons of chemical weapons at the Gorny disposal plant as early as April 2003, according to Izvestiya (see GSN, Aug. 22).  Six other disposal plants are still in various stages of preparation and are not ready for use (Izvestiya/BBC Monitoring, Oct. 8).

Forgotten Weapons

Meanwhile, besides Russia’s arsenal of 40,000 metric tons of chemical weapons stored at seven sites, there are also hundreds of caches of old chemical weapons buried throughout the former Soviet Union that could leak and pose risks, according to Lev Fyodorov, head of the Union for Chemical Safety.

While the treaty oversees Russia’s post-World War II chemical weapons, agents produced between 1915 and 1946 remain unaccounted for, Fyodorov said.  As many as 120,000 metric tons of chemical weapons agents might be “lost and forgotten,” he said.

If those estimates are accurate, it is more than the U.S. and Russian chemical weapons arsenals combined, according to Environmental News Service.  Russian chemical disarmament officials, however, have said that the actual number of buried chemical weapons is much smaller.  The burial sites and unexploded chemical bombs could nonetheless pose some contamination risks, the officials said (Blagov, Environment News Service).

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CWC:  Russia Threatens to “Suspend” Treaty Participation

Russia has threatened to “suspend its membership” in the Chemical Weapons Convention if the deadline for destroying its chemical weapons stockpile is not pushed back by five years, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, Sept. 24).

“If the conference does not meet our request, Russia will have to suspend its membership in the convention,” lawmaker Nikolai Bezborodov — who serves as deputy chief of the Russian commission in charge of chemical weapons destruction — recently told the Interfax-Military News Agency.

Russia has asked fellow members of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which oversees the treaty’s implementation, to extend the 2007 deadline to 2012 (Associated Press/Moscow Times, Oct. 8).

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Al-Qaeda:  Laboratories Indicate Continuing Weapon Efforts

Three small chemical laboratories discovered in Karachi, Pakistan, in July might indicate that al-Qaeda is still attempting to develop weapons of mass destruction, the Washington Times reported Sunday (see GSN, Sept. 18).

Stockpiles of cyanide and other toxic chemicals were discovered in the laboratories in safe houses used by the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi group, which had connections to pre-Sept. 11 Afghanistan.  Group members have trained in Afghanistan and probably have worked with al-Qaeda in Pakistan since the end of the Taliban regime, according to the Times.

The discovery of the laboratories shocked Pakistani authorities because they had believed that al-Qaeda had moved its resources to develop weapons to other Middle Eastern countries but not to Pakistan, officials said.  The Lashkar-i-Jhangvi group, which is relatively unsophisticated, probably received aid from al-Qaeda operatives in the laboratories, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

It will probably be more difficult now for Pakistani authorities to locate other weapon-development operations within Pakistan, according to the Times.  Al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan, along with the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi group and the Jaish-i-Mohammed group, have reorganized into function-specific cells of three to five people each, the Times reported (see GSN, Jan. 4).

An attempt to find a cell of three to five people in Karachi, a city with more than 10 million people, “is next to impossible,” said Lt. Gen. Javad Ashraf Qazi, a former Pakistani military intelligence chief (Ralph Joseph, Washington Times, Oct. 6).

For further information, see:

CDC List of Chemical Agents

Federation of American Scientists Information on Chemical Weapons

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United States:  Oregon Shuts Down Weapons Incinerator

A test burn at the U.S. Umatilla Chemical Depot in Oregon released more than the allowable amounts of chromium and lead into the air, forcing state environmental officials Wednesday to declare the facility closed until further notice (see GSN, Sept. 5).

The incinerator’s stack released more than twice the allowable amount of chromium and slightly more than the permissible amount of lead, but the 10-minute test did not release enough metals to harm the general public, officials said.  Army technicians are testing the incinerator to determine the cause of the problem, the Associated Press reported.

The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality told the Army it has until Monday to produce an assessment plan identifying the problem and a solution.  The department said it will require weekly meetings with the Army until the problem is fixed and burns may begin (Associated Press, Oct. 4).

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Pakistan:  OPCW Will Not Inspect Chemical Plants, Officials Say

Contradicting earlier reports, Pakistan denied Monday that it plans to open five chemical plants to inspections by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the international group that administers the Chemical Weapons Convention (see GSN, Sept. 30).

Pakistan has a procedure in place to handle any OPCW requests for inspection but “no such industrial inspection has been scheduled by the OPCW in Pakistan,” the Foreign Office said (Islamabad News, Oct. 2).

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CWC:  Samoa Ratifies Treaty

Samoa ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention Sept. 27, becoming the 147^th country to do so (see GSN, Sept. 20).  It signed the CWC in 1993.  There are 27 states that have signed the convention but not yet ratified it (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons release, Oct. 3).

For further information, see:

CWC Text

OPCW Main Page

CWC States Parties

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