Defense Environment Alert
September 9, 2003

UNITED STATES REQUESTS EXTENSION TO CHEM WEAPONS TREATY DEADLINE

In an anticipated yet significant move, the United States has announced that it will be unable to meet an interim destruction deadline in an international chemical weapons disposal treaty and is seeking a three-year extension from the international body that oversees treaty compliance. Observers expect the United States will also have to request an extension to the final 100 percent disposal deadline, but the Defense Department, in a Sept. 3 statement, says the 100 percent destruction extension will be addressed at a later date.

The Pentagon Sept. 3 announced that the United States will not meet the 45 percent destruction deadline of April 2004 and that it is requesting the international body that oversees treaty compliance grant an extension until December 2007, "based on the status of destruction operations at U.S. chemical weapons demilitarization facilities and projection of future operations." This revised date "also takes into account legal and procedural barriers as well as technical and operational factors unique to each of the facilities," DOD says.

The Pentagon notes the United States has reached the previous deadlines of 1 percent and 20 percent demilitarization well ahead of schedule. But more recently there have been "significant obstacles" to chemical weapons destruction, DOD says.

The need for the extension to the 45 percent destruction requirement is indicative of how politically challenged and technically complex the chemical demilitarization program is, one non-governmental source says. And the appeal is significant internationally because it puts the United States on record as supporting extensions to the treaty's deadlines, the source says.

"The U.S. chemical demilitarization program has had several delays due to unresolved political and operational issues that forced operational shutdowns or postponed start-up dates," DOD says. The Pentagon statement notes that at the Tooele Chemical Destruction Facility in Utah, no weapons disposal occurred for eight months in 2002-03 due to an investigation of safety practices following an incident where a worker was exposed to a minute quantity of chemical agent during a maintenance operation (Defense Environment Alert, April 8, p 12).

Sources who follow chemical weapons disposal issues say they are not surprised by the U.S. request, noting the Army previously has said it will be unable to complete total destruction of the U.S. stockpile by 2007, the final destruction deadline in the treaty, known as the Chemical Weapons Convention, and that some stockpile sites may still be destroying weapons beyond 2012, the five-year extension date allowed for in the treaty (Defense Environment Alert, Oct. 9, 2001, p3).

Last fall, an Army official acknowledged the United States would likely miss the 45 percent destruction deadline of April 29, 2004, due to slipping operations schedules at the Army's Alabama and Oregon facilities. The official said even the Army's best efforts would only get it to the 43 or 44 percent disposal mark by April 2004 (Defense Environment Alert, Sept. 24, 2002, p4). Now, however, the Defense Department says it has destroyed approximately 23 percent of its stockpile; a Sept. 5 General Accounting Office report, citing Army and DOD data, says 26 percent has been demilitarized (see related story).

But the non-governmental source says seeking an extension to next April's deadline is a positive sign because to date the U.S. government has been reluctant to request any extensions, as a way of pressuring Russia to continue with its weapons destruction efforts.

Russia has failed to meet the interim deadlines for destroying 1 percent and 20 percent of its stockpile, and last fall sought a blanket extension of all its destruction deadlines from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the international body that oversees treaty compliance. But the United States urged Russia instead to ask for step-by-step extensions, the source says.

The source says it is likely OPCW will approve the U.S. request, although perhaps only in one-year increments, as has occurred with Russia.

The United States will first present its petition for an extension to the OPCW Executive Council during the council's Sept. 23-26 meeting in The Hague, Netherlands. The Executive Council is comprised of elected representatives from 41 member countries. If cleared by the Executive Council, the treaty's 153 parties will then vote on the U.S. request in October at the annual Conference of the States Parties, also in The Hague.

Of the five countries with declared stockpiles, only India has announced it will meet the 45 percent disposal deadline, the non-governmental source says. In addition to India, the United States and Russia, two unnamed countries also have stockpiles. These countries are believed to be South Korea and Albania, the source says. South Korea has provided no public information on its destruction deadlines, and Albania just recently announced it had discovered a cache of chemical weapons, the source says.