Reuters News
Thu April 24, 2003 01:53 PM ET

Russia Says It Meets Chemical Weapons Deadline

By Andrei Shukshin

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Zinovy Pak, the outgoing supervisor of Russia's chemical weapons destruction program, said on Thursday Moscow had beaten an initial deadline for dismantling the stock but more problems loomed ahead.

Russia inherited from the Soviet Union 40,000 tons of nerve gas and other toxic agents, the world's largest chemical weapons stockpile -- a tiny drop of which could prove deadly.

Cash shortages plagued destruction efforts, but recently Western countries have promised large sums, prompted by worries that weapons could be used by militant groups.

"It is most delightful news," Pak told reporters. "Russia can announce to the world that this morning it fulfilled the first stage of its chemical weapons destruction program."

The first stage, formally due to be completed on April 29, involved only one percent of the stock but Pak said it took the heat off Russia after it failed to stick to the schedule of an original plan that would have seen all weapons scrapped by 2007.

This new deadline is part of an extended schedule worked out for Russia to allow it to honor the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). Moscow has to report quarterly on its progress but the next official interim deadline now comes only in 2007.

Pak, the ebullient head of the Munitions Agency and the first civilian to oversee destruction of the Russian chemical arsenal, was speaking at a farewell news conference in his office which he will be ceding shortly to an army general.

Pak got his job in 1999, after the Defense Ministry had failed for years to start destruction of the Soviet Union's massive stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.

This week the government accepted Pak's resignation offer. He declined to say directly what prompted the move but spoke of disagreements with government agencies and regional governors about how money allocated for the program should be spent.

Last year, leading Western states pledged $20 billion to Russia to help it neutralize the weapons.

Pak said he hoped his successor, a protege of Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, would have the nerve to act not as a subordinate but as a civilian and push ahead with the program regardless of any outside pressure.

"Many think 2007 is a long way away...but it is a very short time to do our job," he said. "So, very shortly we may start hearing instead of congratulatory words from world bodies, as we hear now, things of a completely different nature."

So far, Russia has only one functioning chemical weapons destruction plant.

Cooperation with the West and especially with the United States got off the ground after the September 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. cities raised the awareness of the threat chemical weapons could pose if they fell into the wrong hands