Russia Opens Third Chemical Weapons Destruction Facility Friday September 8th, 2006 / 12h31

MARADYKOVSKY, Russia (AP)--Russia opened its third chemical weapons destruction plant Friday as part of an effort to jump-start stalled efforts to eliminate the world's largest arsenal of toxic weaponry and prevent any possibility terrorists could get hold of them. Officials and observers attending the ceremony at the plant in the town of Maradykovsky watched as engineers clad in full-body chemical protection suits reached into hermetically sealed boxes in the first operations to neutralize aerial bombs filled with VX nerve gas. The plant, located some 725 kilometers northeast of Moscow, holds more than 17% of Russia's arsenal, or 6,900 tons of nerve agents stored in aerial bombs and missile warheads. "Today's event...demonstrates Russia's efforts to strictly fulfill its international commitments and shows that Russia has the political will to see through to the end the process of chemical disarmament," said Victor Kholstov, an official spearheading the Russia's government chemical weapons destruction efforts. Local residents appeared to support the new operations, though Tamara Ashikmina, a community activist, said some remained concerned about the plant's longterm effects. "Of course, people here are anxious because guests can come and go but (we) have to live here," said Ashikmina, deputy head of the chemistry department at Vyatka State University in Kirov, the largest city in the region, about 60 kilometers away. The destruction facility, on the site of one of Russia's seven former chemical weapons production plants, will become a focal point of the push to meet an April 2007 target set by the Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for Russia to destroy 20% of its stockpile. To date it has eliminated just 3%, as opposed to 39% destroyed by the U.S., home to the second largest stockpile. Russia's two existing chemical weapons destruction facilities have been constructed with generous foreign funding. Construction of another plant that was to have been the biggest - Shchuchye, with chemical weapons stored in millions of artillery shells - has been bogged down in disputes between Russia and the U.S., the main funder. The delays at that plant have pushed Maradykovsky onto the front line. It has been constructed in less than a year and a half, and is the sole site to be funded 100% by Russia. "The Russians a couple of years ago made a critical decision that if they were to have any chance of meeting Chemical Weapons Convention deadlines, they had to go to the easier, bulk agent sites," said Paul Walker, a weapons expert at Global Green USA, the Washington-based affiliate of former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's environmental organization, Green Cross International. "I think also from a reason of national pride, they really wanted to do one site themselves and have it be successful." The bombs at Maradykovsky hold VX, soman, and sarin, as well as a mixture of lewisite and mustard gas, Global Green said. Technicians will have to open each bomb, drain out some agent if necessary, insert a neutralizing reagent, close up the bomb and let it sit for a few months to allow the chemical processes to take place. Walker expressed concern about the safety of the technology, which he said wasn't internationally tested. "Every time you open one of those bombs, it's a very high-risk event in which workers have to be completely suited up in oxygen suits, because any molecules that might drip or vaporize out of those containers could kill somebody immediately," he told The AP. He also said the speed of destruction, which Global Green estimates at over 500 metric tons a month until the April 2007 deadline, led to safety concerns. But the head of the local Green Cross information office in Maradykovsky, Pavel Filyov, said he was convinced the technology to be used was "one of the safest." The town of 3,500 and surrounding region of 50,000 has been promised a new apartment house, central heating system, electricity and sewage system - an investment that by Russian law should be equivalent to 10% of the sum to be spent on the weapons destruction process itself. Russia signed the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997, pledging to eliminate its arsenal within 10 years. However, it won international agreement to prolong the deadline until 2012 because of a lack of funds. Walker said neither Russia nor the U.S. was anywhere near on track to meet that extended deadline. The U.S. is now expected to complete destruction of its chemical weapons by 2020, he said.