12 November 2004 13:42
Russia to cut number of foreign watchdogs thanks to technology

Russia is cutting the number of foreign inspectors involved in checking the chemical weapons storage facilities by introducing technical means of monitoring. The head of a department of the Centre of Conventional Problems and Disarmament Programmes, Aleksandr Gorbovskiy, said this today at the sixth public forum held in Moscow to discuss problems of the implementation by Russia of the 1993 convention banning the chemical weapons.

Over 100 representatives of administrations of Russia's regions, enterprises, institutions, as well as Russian and foreign organizations involved in the implementation of the programme to destroy chemical weapons are taking part in the two-day discussion that started on Wednesday [10 November].

Gorbovskiy said that the "introduction of monitoring devices at the facilities of storage and destruction of chemical weapons makes it possible to reduce expenditures on carrying out inspections by representatives of international organizations imposing ban on chemical weapons." He gave an example of the facility in the village of Gornyy, Saratov Region, where the number of inspectors had been reduced from eight to five owing to the introduction of appropriate technical means monitoring the storage and destruction of chemical weapons.

According to Gorbovskiy's estimate, " annual expenditure on checking a chemical weapons storage facility in Russia stand at about 1.5m dollars." There are seven chemical weapons arsenals in the Russian Federation at present, and two or three inspections are carried out at each of them every year.

He said that in 1993 when Convention on the Prohibition of Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction was signed the expenditures on carrying out inspections for a decade were estimated at 500m dollars. In 1997, when Russia ratified the convention, the expenditures were assessed at about 200m dollars for a decade.