Russia opens new site to destroy chemical weapons

Published: Thursday, 2 March, 2006, 10:36 AM Doha Time

KAMBARKA, Russia: Russia opened a new high-tech site yesterday in a Russia opened a new high-tech site yesterday in a birch forest near the Ural mountains designed for destruction of chemical weapons that officials say will alone eliminate 16% of the country’s 40,000-tonne stockpile.

The Kambarka facility in central Russia is the second such site to be opened in the country with the aim of destroying a total 20% of the country’s chemical weapons stockpiles by next year and all of them by 2012.

“We built it fast but we built it well,” Alexander Burutin, a Kremlin advisor, told journalists who were brought to the site on a visit organised by the government to mark the opening of the new facility.

“We can say now with certainty that we will have destroyed all 40,000 tonnes of chemical weapons by 2012,” Burutin said.

The destruction equipment at Kambarka, one of seven chemical weapons storage sites in Russia, is set up to destroy lewisite, a blistering agent stocked by Russia since World War II.

The $31mn budget for Kambarka was financed at 63% by Russia, 34% by Germany and 3% by the European Union, according to General Valery Kapashin, head of a defence ministry department for the destruction of chemical weapons.

The first facility was opened at Gorny in the western Saratov region in 2002.

The cost of destroying Russia’s entire stockpile, which will require the construction of five more facilities to cover all the country’s arsenal storage The cost of destroying Russia’s entire stockpile, which will require the construction of five more facilities to cover all the country’s arsenal storage points, is estimated at more than $6bn. – AFP