By Jacquelyn S. Porth
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- U.S. Ambassador Eric Javits says that despite a recent request to extend its deadline for the complete elimination of its chemical weapons stockpile, the United States is committed to "the fullest possible transparency" of its chemical weapons destruction process.

Javits, head of the U.S. delegation to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), told delegates attending the 45th executive council session in The Hague, Netherlands, May 16 that the United States remains fully supportive of the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).

Not only is the United States dedicated to the success of the CWC, he said, but also to the success of the OPCW, based in Vienna, Austria, "as a model of effective multilateral action against an entire category of weapons of mass destruction."

In April, the United States requested a five-year extension for 100 percent disposal of its chemical weapons stockpile, shifting its planned completion date from April 2007 to April 2012.  (See related article.)

Javits said the United States will strive to achieve its goal of eliminating its entire stockpile of chemical weapons by the new deadline, or, if that turns out not to be possible, it will complete the process "as soon as feasible thereafter."  (See related article.)

He said the request for a deadline extension asserts the United States is doing everything that it can to meet the 2012 deadline, but that "our best projections indicate that the U.S. destruction effort will likely extend beyond that date."  The treaty's success "is not dictated by the technical and political vagaries that have slowed various destruction efforts," he said, but its ultimate success remains in the hands of the collective signatories, with each nation responsible for implementing its own national program for destruction of chemical weapons.

Javits also said that a country that has been diligent but not fully successful in meeting its destruction deadline should "not be regarded in the same way as a State Party that has made little or no effort" to comply.  The U.S. Army, he said, began destroying its chemical weapons stockpile years before the convention ever entered into force.  By the time all its chemical weapons are destroyed, he said, the United States will have spent $35 billion on this effort.

The United Sates also has provided money and assistance to other nations intent on destroying their own chemical weapons stockpiles.  In 2006, U.S. officials made two technical visits to Asia in conjunction with the OPCW Technical Secretariat.  Additional assistance visits and information-sharing meetings to three African nations, five countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, one in Asia and one in Eastern Europe also are planned, he said.

Javits said the United States and Romania have developed an implementation assistance program and offered it to other nations in English; Spanish and French versions of the program are expected soon, he added.

For more information about U.S. policy, see Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)