The Asahi Shimbun
September 20, 2003

Disposal of poison gas shells finally starts

By KENTARO KURIHARA:The Asahi Shimbun

LUQUAN, China-A cache of corroding chemical weapons abandoned by the Imperial Japanese Army near here is finally being dismantled 12 years after Chinese construction workers discovered the World War II stockpile.

A high school dormitory was being built in the nearby city of Gaocheng, in Hebei province, in May 1991 when 52 leaking shells were discovered. The Chinese People's Liberation Army transferred the shells to a military facility here as a precaution, pending their eventual destruction.

``The construction workers were complaining of headaches and nausea,'' recalled the high school principal.

A joint Japan-China task force has been assembled for the disposal work. The 150-strong team includes 39 Japanese government officials and Self-Defense Forces specialists. The remaining personnel are from the People's Liberation Army and the Chinese government. Excavation work began Sept. 6.

The SDF forces must wear protective safety suits that cover them head to toe, complete with gas masks.

As of Sept. 12, about 20 shells containing lethal toxic gases had been processed. Some contained the deadly pulmonary toxicant hosgen.

Tokyo is shouldering the 280 million yen cost of disposal work.

The Luquan project is the fourth such site to be treated since Japan in autumn 2000 began disposing of wartime stockpiles in China.

The Chemical Weapons Convention for the abolition and safe disposal of chemical weapons came into effect in 1997, and two years later Japan signed an agreement with China to destroy all chemical stockpiles.

Tokyo dispatched a research team to Luquan in July 2001 to flesh out details of the disposal work. The final go-ahead was given this spring.

About 700,000 chemical weapons shells are thought to have been abandoned by the Japanese army in China, but only 36,000 have been recovered.

The Chemical Weapons Convention calls for the complete disposal of all discarded chemical weapons within 10 years-meaning Japan must finish the cleanup by the end of 2007.

The deadline can be extended by five years, but only if the country that has the chemical weapons approves.

Time, though, is of essence even though the agreement between Tokyo and Beijing does not specify a duration. Leaking mustard gas from barrels abandoned by Japanese troops killed a man and injured more than 40 last month in Qiqihar, northern Heilongjiang province. The incident prompted China's deputy foreign minister, Wang Yi, to make a special request of Japan to ``speed up the weapons disposal work.''

The bulk of the yet-to-be recovered chemical weapons are believed by Chinese authorities to be buried in the Harva district of Dunhua, in Jilin province.

Japan and China are currently constructing roads in the area ahead of what promises to be a mammoth recovery project.

Still, when it comes to completing the daunting cleanup task by 2007, Gun Saito, head of the Japanese investigation team, admitted, ``Honestly speaking, that's a very tough target.''(IHT/Asahi: September 20,2003)