U.S. will miss chemical treaty deadline

By UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
Published April 14, 2006

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon told Congress this week the United States will miss the treaty deadline for eliminating its stockpile of chemical weapons.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the House and Senate Armed Services Committee in a letter that the April 2007 deadline to destroy 31,500 tons of declared chemical weapons is impossible too meet, as is the extended deadline of 2012.

"Current estimates indicate approximately 66 percent of the declared chemical weapons stockpile will be destroyed by April 2012," Rumsfeld wrote.

The United States has destroyed just under 40 percent of its stockpile thus far.

Rumsfeld's report comes two weeks after Peter Flory, the assistant defense secretary told Congress the chemical weapons facility being jointly constructed by the United States and Russia under the Cooperative Threat Reduction program in western Siberia has been further delayed more than a year, also pushing back Russia's ability to comply with the treaty deadline. The Shchuch'ye facility is meant to provide Russia a capability to eliminate some 2.1 million artillery shells and rockets loaded with nerve agent.

Russia has obtained extensions for the first three deadlines and the United States has already received an extension for the 45 percent destruction deadline.

The U.S. and Russian stockpiles are being destroyed in accordance with the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention. The convention includes 168 member states, according to the U.S. State Department. Only a handful of countries, including North Korea, Iraq, are not members. Afghanistan ratified the treaty in 2003. Non-members are prohibited access to certain controlled chemicals.