The president of Udmurtia, an internal republic within Russia, said yesterday that additional funding is needed for construction of a chemical weapons disposal plant there, Interfax reported (see GSN, Nov. 13, 2008).
The storage depot at Kizner holds more than 14 percent of Russia's stockpile of chemical warfare materials, which once stood at 40,000 metric tons. Demilitarization operations are scheduled to begin there next year.
"The situation with Kizner has become complicated because federal financing was reduced, and this affected our facility," said Alexander Volkov, president of the internal republic.
Moscow gave priority to construction of a disposal site in the town of Pochep, Volkov said (see GSN, June 17, 2008). "However, there is still a chance to get funds thanks to foreign assistance which is also provided under this (chemical weapons scrapping) program," he said.
Volkov said he expected construction of the Kizner plant to be finished on schedule.
Moscow has pledged to meet its April 2012 deadline for full elimination of materials banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention (Interfax, May 4).