A senior Russian official said this week that the nation would meet its obligation to destroy 45 percent of its chemical weapons stockpile by the end of this year, Interfax reported (see GSN, May 29).
The mandate is set in the Chemical Weapons Convention. Russia's world's-largest chemical arsenal once stood at 40,000 metric tons, meaning 18,000 metric tons must be eliminated by Dec. 31 of this year.
"We are now fulfilling the third stage of the convention obligations to destroy chemical weapons, which require Russia to destroy 5,000 [metric tons] of toxic substances contained in 400,000 chemical ammunition units in 2009," Viktor Kholstov, of the Russian Industry and Trade Ministry, said Tuesday. "In 2008, we fulfilled the plan by destroying 5,970 [metric tons] of toxic substances."
The convention requires Russia to complete chemical demilitarization by April 2012. Observers have expressed skepticism about the nation's pledge to meet that deadline (see GSN, April 8, 2008; Interfax, June 17).