China May Give Japan Until 2012 to Clean Up Artillery (Update1)

July 5 (Bloomberg) -- China said it may give Japan until 2012 to clean up a cache of chemical artillery shells left in at least two Chinese provinces, in an move that shows improving relations between the two nations.

China's government may extend the deadline by two years while it discusses a plan to build a $10 billion plant with Japan in Jilin province to destroy shells that contain mustard gas, said the Chinese foreign ministry's Director-General Liu Yiren.

"Japan has begun work at only a third of 60 weapon burial sites" found and more time is required, said Liu today at an interview in northeastern China's Heilongjiang province. "Many of the sites are yet to be touched."

The cleanup is part of the effort by Asia's two largest economies to improve relations and maintain growth in their $189.4 billion trade, which rose 12.7 percent last year. China's President Hu Jintao urged Japan to remove tensions at a meeting this week with the Democratic Party of Japan's head Ichiro Ozawa.

Relations between China and Japan, which fought two wars in the last two centuries, have been strained by disputes over gas explorations rights in the East China Sea and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to a Tokyo war shrine.

"If these disputes are not resolved, trade relations will certainly be hurt," said Hu Biliang, a senior economist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in a July 3 phone interview.

Ties have improved since Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing met his counterpart Taro Aso on May 23.

Japan's Weapons Dump

Japan's army made an estimated 7 million chemical shells during the Second World War, storing about 700,000 of them in northeastern China in an area formerly known as Manchuria. The shells contained chemical agents, mostly mustard gas, as well as hydrogen cyanide, phosgene, arsenic and a blistering agent called lewisite, Chinese foreign ministry officials said.

As many as 300,000 shells were found at the largest dump in Harbaling in Jilin. Another 37,500 shells were found in Mudanjiang in Heilongjiang province.

Leaking mustard gas from old shells scalded 44 people in Heilongjiang's Qiqihar in 2003, forcing Japan to pay 300 million yen ($2.6 million) in damages. Leakages were also reported in southern China's Guangzhou city in June 2005 and in Jilin's Dunhua in August 2004, according to the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

"If these chemical weapons were indeed left by the Japanese Imperial Army, then Japan will clean them up," Keiji Ide, a spokesman for the Japanese Embassy in Beijing, said in a July 3 phone interview. "Japan will take the responsibility" agreed to in the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, he said.

The shells will be destroyed by incineration, deep burial and using chemicals to neutralize the toxins, the Chinese foreign ministry's Liu said. The treatment plant may cost an estimated $10 billion to build, he said.