ISN SECURITY WATCH (Friday, 12 May 2006: 11.20 CET) -- The US has destroyed thousands of metric tonnes of chemical weapons but has thousands more to go and will miss a 2012 deadline to complete the task, citing red tape and technical difficulties.
According to the US Army, 10,125 metric tonnes of chemical weapons out of 27,768 it has acknowledged existing have been destroyed.
The US, along with 177 other countries, ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) to destroy chemical weapons stockpiles by 2012. Originally, the deadline was 2007.
Under the CWC, the US had ten years from 29 April 1997 to destroy its declared stockpile of chemical agents. The convention included a provision for a one-time, five-year extension, which was recently submitted to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The OPCW oversees the implementation of the convention.
The US Army acknowledged earlier this week that it would not make the deadline, and Russia is also not likely to meet the deadline, having so far destroyed only some 3 per cent of its 40,000 metric tonnes of chemical weapons.
While the US Army is blaming the delay on state regulators and incinerators that must be modified to destroy chemical weapons, Russia says its facilities for destroying its chemical weapons are not yet at full operational capacity.
Russian officials have said their facilities should be operating at full capacity by 2007 and that the country would do its best to meet the new deadline.
According to the US Army's Chemical Materials Agency (CMA), delays have been caused specifically by unanticipated difficulties in obtaining environmental permits for the start of operations; lower than estimated destruction rates; facility stoppages to investigate and fix problems; development of protocols to improve operational safety; deteriorating munitions that have complicated the handling and destruction process; and facility startup delays due to additional community emergency preparedness requirements.
The CMA says that the US has completed the destruction of all initially declared Category 3 items, and should have 45 per cent of its stockpile destroyed by 31 December 2007.
(By ISN Security Watch staff)