Created: 11.11.2004 13:09 MSK
The international effort to destroy the world’s largest chemical
weapons arsenal is being undercut by disputes, including who should win lucrative
contracts, experts said. Russia’s top official said Western countries have
so far failed to provide sufficient funding for destruction of Russia’s arsenal.
With a commitment to destroy 40,000 metric tons (44,000 tons)
of chemical weapons by 2012, Russia has eagerly courted foreign funding.
More than 20 countries — including members of the Group of Eight industrial
nations — pledged money for the program, which has been beset by funding
shortfalls.
Viktor Kholstov, a top Russian official overseeing chemical disarmament,
told a conference in Moscow on Wednesday that Western countries had donated
just some $217 million so far, about 7 percent of the $3 billion necessary
to build the destruction facilities.
The claim reflected the tensions that have undercut international cooperation
in eliminating Russia’s chemical weapons. Western countries have spent hundreds
of millions of dollars, in fact, but only a fraction of that money has been
channeled through the Russian government rather than going directly to contractors,
the vast majority of which are non-Russian.
The United States alone has spent some $709 million so far on building a
chemical weapons destruction facility in the Ural Mountains town of Shchuchye,
said Patrick Wakefield, a deputy assistant to the U.S. defense secretary
who is responsible for chemical disarmament and threat reduction. Altogether,
the United States has earmarked $1.039 billion for Shchuchye.
Wakefield alluded to “some problems” that have emerged between U.S. and Russian
officials over the past year. “The problems have increased costs and delayed
schedules,” Wakefield told the conference on Russia’s progress toward meeting
its chemical weapons destruction goals. He did not elaborate, but his comments
appeared to be a warning to Russian officials to cooperate more with their
Western partners.
Paul Walker, a representative of the Washington-based Global Green organization,
said many of the disagreements revolved around the choice of contractors
awarded lucrative construction projects. “There have been a variety of issues
just this past year about Russians coming in at the 11th hour and demanding
that a different contractor get a major contract,” Walker said. “They’ve
held up construction for months.”
He said that the Cooperative Threat Reduction program — the U.S. agency
that funds disarmament in Russia — had frozen contracting for construction
at Shchuchye for up to five months after Russia insisted on its own candidate
to build the site’s heating plant. The Russians ultimately backed down.
“The broken record we’ve heard for over a year now is the complaint that
the money is going to Western contractors,” Walker said. “What the Russians
refuse to admit — and it’s becoming a bit of a diplomatic roadblock —
is that they wouldn’t be where they are today without the hundreds of millions
of dollars that the West has committed.”
In additional to officials and experts, the conference included members of
the communities closest to the seven destruction sites, just one of which
is working so far. The communities are counting on investment in the destruction
plants to filter down in the form of jobs, housing, roads, running water
and other basics they lack today, and hoping the plants will remove the environmental
and security threat posed by chemical weapons.
“How much longer do we have to wait until we live in an ecologically clean,
safe region?” Galina Vepreva, a teacher who works in community education
for the Russian Green Cross environmental organization in Shchuchye, was
quoted as saying by Associated Press. “If you don’t live next to these horrible
weapons, it’s hard to understand how fearful this waiting is.”
Russia signed the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997, pledging to eliminate
its arsenal within 10 years. However, it won international agreement to prolong
the deadline until 2012 because of a lack of funds.