Russia Seeks to Delay Bioweapons Destruction

by Sergei Blagov

U.S. Senator Richard Lugar examined Russia's chemical arsenal in May. Here he shows how easily a chemical weapons canister fits into a briefcase

Sergei Kiriyenko said Russia will use a provision in international Chemical Weapons Convention allowing an additional five years past the due date of 2007 for the destruction of its chemical weapons, according to the official Russian RIA news agency.

Although Russia has pledged to destroy all its chemical weapons, Moscow has been slow to implement its commitments under the Chemical Weapons Convention, citing lack of funding.

Russian officials reportedly informed the ongoing 5th international Chemical Weapons Convention conference in the Hague that now Russia aims to destroy its chemical weapons by April 29, 2012.

General Nikolai Bezborodov, deputy head of the commission on chemical disarmament, said that in the event Russia's new plans are not accepted, Russia may consider temporary withdrawal from the Convention, Interfax news agency reported.

Currently, 44,000 tons of poisonous military gases are being kept at seven main storage facilities, all in European Russia.

These chemical weapons are blister agents such as mustard gas and lewisite, and nerve agents such as sarin and VX.

Moscow promised to destroy its chemical weapons when it ratified the international Chemical Weapons Convention in November 1997.

But Russia has repeatedly asked for more international aid money and time to destroy the deadly chemicals safely. The country has fallen behind schedule concerning its commitment to destroy all its chemical weapons, four fifths of which are nerve agents.

Moscow has previously argued that it would need some $5 to 6 billion for the liquidation of its chemical arsenal, and has asked the West to provide money to construct seven plants to dispose of the chemical weapons.

The U.S. government has committed nearly $900 million to the design and construction of seven destruction facilities, including Shchuchye, in the Ural Mountains.

About 14 percent of Russia's chemical arsenal is stored at Shchuchye, the largest planned destruction plant, which is due to begin operations in 2004.

Lev Fyodorov, head of the Russian nongovernmental organization Union for Chemical Safety, has claimed that the facilities currently under construction in Russia, including Shchuchye, were based on untested destruction technologies.

Moreover, apart from seven official storage facilities, hundreds of caches of old chemical weapons randomly buried throughout the former Soviet states could rupture and leak, posing a environmental threat.

While the Chemical Weapons Convention deals with post-World War II chemical stocks, the weapons produced between 1915 and 1946 remain unaccounted for, according to Fyodorov.

Many underground dumps were Òlost and forgottenÓ in Russia, Fyodorov says. He estimates that up to 120,000 metric tons of the weapons could have been "lost and forgotten" by the Russian military.

If his estimates are correct, the 120,000 tons of forgotten chemical weapons is more than the amount now in the arsenals of Russia and the United States combined.

Russian officials in charge of destroying the chemical weapons have repeatedly denied Fyodorov's claims, saying that the problem was not that large. But officials have conceded that there could be some contamination resulting from old storage sites or unexploded chemical ordnance.

Norwegian Nuclear watchdog Bellona Foundation said of Shchuchye in May that the "dilapidated state of the weapons dump holding corroding chemicals from the world's largest known chemical weapons program points to disturbing bureaucratic snags in U.S. and Russian efforts to contain the threat to world security."

The United States is destroying its chemical weapons stockpile of an estimated 31,000 tons with a target date of 1997. As of September 12, 2002, an U.S. Army status report shows that 25.6 percent of the chemical agents have been destroyed and 38.9 percent of the munitions in the stockpile have been destroyed.