OPCW Leadership Changes Hands
Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Leadership of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons on Sunday passed from Director General Rogelio Pfirter to Turkish envoy Ahmet Üzümcü (see GSN, Dec. 3, 2009).

Pfirter said he was particularly proud of the significant advancements made during his eight-year tenure on the destruction of states parties' chemical weapons stockpiles as well as progress in preventing the spread of banned warfare materials, an OPCW press release stated.

This month, the monitoring body for the Chemical Weapons Convention announced that slightly more than 60 percent of the world's declared chemical warfare materials had been destroyed by member nations (see GSN, July 8).

"In addition, there has been a substantial increase in the number of states parties to the CWC, bringing it very near full universality, as well as a considerable advance in the national implementation of the treaty," Pfirter said in released remarks.

The pact has 188 member nations. To date, only Angola, Egypt, North Korea, Somalia and Syria have yet to sign the convention while Israel and Myanmar have signed but not yet ratified the pact (see GSN, April 30).

Pfirter said he wished chemical disarmament operations were further along in Russia and the United States -- the two countries holding the vast amount of the planet's chemical weapons. Both Washington and Moscow have acknowledged they do not expect to meet the April 2012 convention deadline for completing demilitarization work (see GSN, July 30).

"This unfortunate circumstance poses a considerable challenge for the OPCW," Pfirter said. "I am nevertheless confident that both countries will continue to work hard in order to fulfill their CW disarmament obligations at the earliest and that the organization's response to these events will remain balanced and constructive."

Pfirter said he would return to his previous work as a diplomat for Argentina.

Üzümcü said he planned to pursue universal adoption of the Chemical Weapons Convention during his tenure.

"Having 188 state parties has already been a major success," the veteran diplomat, who most recently served as Ankara's permanent representative to the U.N. Office at Geneva, said in released remarks. "The adherence of the remaining seven countries will not be easy. But this should in no way prevent us from devoting our time and energy for increased contacts with the concerned states.

"We should raise awareness about the incentives provided by the convention and the obsolete character of chemical weapons. We should encourage them to delink the issue from other regional or international problems," he added.

The new director general said he was confident the anticipated failure to meet the April 2012 destruction deadline by some member nations was due only to "technical reasons."

"We must maintain our efforts until every single chemical weapon is destroyed," Üzümcü said. "We don’t know yet the exact level of destruction to be reached by April 2012. It will certainly be significant" (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons release, July 23).