UPDATED: 10:40,
August 19, 2006
|
|
|
|
|
The Japanese Cabinet said Friday it will
begin collecting and disposing of abandoned wartime chemical weapons in
Dunhua, of China's Jilin Province, next week, with support from the Chinese
government. The project, which will run from Aug. 22
till Sept. 26, is the third in Dunhua. During the first and second time in
October to November, 2005 and in May-June, 2006 respectively, a total of 605
shells of chemical weapons have been collected from Dunhua. Chinese official statistics show that
Japan abandoned at least 2 million tons of chemical weapons at about 40 sites
in 15 Chinese provinces at the end of World War II, most of them in the three
northeast provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning. In the past nine years, China and Japan
have worked together to investigate, excavate, retrieve and pack the dumped
weapons. So far 37,499 chemical weapons and 200 tons of contaminated items
have been collected, but none have been destroyed. More than 2,000 Chinese have fallen
victim to Japan's abandoned chemical weapons, killed by leading toxic gas while
working at construction sites or on other occasions, according to China's
Foreign Ministry. China and Japan joined the United
Nations Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997. Two years later, they signed a
memorandum, in which Japan admitted that it had abandoned a large amount of
chemical weapons in China at the end of World War II. Under the memorandum, Japan is
obliged to remove the weapons by April 2007 and provide all necessary funds,
equipment and personnel for their retrieval and destruction. Source: Xinhua |