World / Europe

 

In a school lecture theatre in the western Siberian village of Planovy, Colonel Sergei Lotansky points to a display of empty chemical weapons shells. Even the smallest, barely bigger than a wine bottle, could contain 440g of nerve agent - enough to kill several thousand people.

Col Lotansky is chief engineer at the nearby Shchuchye military base where, in 14 large storerooms, nearly 2m active shells are stacked on wooden racks.

They contain 5,400 tonnes of sarin, soman and VX nerve gas - theoretically sufficient, divided into individual doses, to wipe out the world's population many times over. In an age of terrorism aimed at mass slaughter, these shells give security experts as many nightmares as nuclear weapons.

Chemical shells are small, easy to transport and set off, and millions exist. Shchuchye is one of seven stockpiles in Russia that hold 40,000 tonnes of chemical agent, the world's biggest arsenal, though some contain bigger weapons or spray tanks. Shchuchye's particular vulnerability, thanks to the portability of its shells, makes it the centrepiece of an international, multi-billion dollar programme to build destruction facilities at each site. It is also a case study of the difficulties that have dogged the programme - and not been entirely overcome.

The US has spent $10m (€8.5m, £6m) on beefing up security at the Shchuchye base. Nearly $2bn, from donors including the UK, Canada, Italy, Switzerland, Russia and, above all, the US, is going into a vast destruction plant 15km away. The plant was due to be operating by now, but the start of construction was delayed by Russian money shortages and bureaucratic footdragging, and a three-year delay getting US Congress to approve funding.

Today, at last, two hangar-like structures are rising from a clearing in a birch forest, teeming with men in hard hats and echoing with concrete mixers and drills.

If all now goes to plan, from 2008 trainloads of shells will arrive here from the stockpile on a specially-built rail line. The nerve agent will be removed, broken into constituent ingredients, then combined irreversibly with bitumen. At full capacity, the plant should be capable of destroying Shchuchye's stockpile in just over three years, in time for the 2012 deadline Russia is committed to under the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention.

Colonel General Victor Kholstov, deputy director of Russia's Federal Agency for Industry, who oversees the project, insists it is on track.

"We revised our construction plans in 2004 and I will say that our goal of starting operations by the middle of 2008 is realistic," he says.

Adam Ingram, UK armed forces minister, recently visited Shchuchye to see how Britain had spent £15m ($26m, €22m) on providing water and electricity supplies to the site - out of a pledged $100m to help Russian chemical weapons destruction. He praised the "substantial progress".

"There are evil forces out there who are only too intent on getting their hands on such materials, and we have got to stop that happening," he said.

But are international donors overlooking another threat to the project? Drive around the ramshackle wooden houses and crumbling low-rise apartments of Shchuchye and its surrounding villages, and it is clear the oil wealth transforming Russia's big cities has not reached here.

The taint of being situated next to thousands of tonnes of nerve gas has almost wiped out its agriculture and food processing industry.

A report in September by Green Cross International, an environmental group that monitors weapons destruction, found the unemployment rate at 43 per cent among the Shchuchye area's 29,000 inhabitants.

In nine out of 10 households, per capita income was below the official subsistence level of $77 a month; less than a third had running water. With half its roads unpaved, and hospitals underequipped and understaffed, the area was dangerously unprepared for an emergency. The report warned that disgruntled residents might resort to holding up construction of the destruction plant through sabotage or demonstrations - or worse.

"Impoverished residents might be driven to compromise the security of the nerve agent stockpile or . . . destruction facility - for the right price - through collusion with terrorist groups," it said.

Britain's Ministry of Defence believes the threat is exaggerated. It is Russia's responsibility to upgrade local infrastructure, which it claims it is doing. Ridding it of the chemical weapons taint would itself help to regenerate Shchuchye's economy. Galina Vepreva, who runs Shchuchye's information centre on chemical disarmament, says the town has already seen some benefit. Russia is committed to devoting 10 per cent of the cost of weapons destruction facilities to local infrastructure upgrades.

But Ms Vepreva fears more spending is needed to avoid Green Cross scenarios coming true.