MOSCOW — Russia plans to start dismantling the world's largest chemical weapons stockpile this year, more than a year past the international deadline, but it will need massive Western help to keep up the costly process, officials said today.
The head of the government's Munitions Agency, Zinovy Pak, will submit a program for dismantling Russia's 44,000 tons of chemical weapons to President Vladimir Putin next month, agency spokesman Alexander Shutiy said in a telephone interview.
According to the plan, Russia must start destroying the weapons in "the second half of the year," Shutiy said. He wouldn't mention any monetary figures or time frame or give any other details about the program, saying it's still in the works.
The first artillery shells containing phosgene will be destroyed this year at the Shchuchye disposal facility in the Ural Mountains, some 1,085 miles southeast of Moscow, said the Munitions Agency's top expert, Alexander Ivanov.
"Destroying phosgene is relatively easy and cheap compared to more deadly chemical weapons," Ivanov said. "We would need American help to build more complex disposal facilities in Shchuchye."
Also this year, Russia will carry out work to make another disposal plant in Gorny, in the Volga River region of Saratov, ready to start dismantling chemical weapons next year, Ivanov said.
Under the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention, Russia was supposed to destroy the first 440 tons of its chemical weapons by the end of April 2000. However, the government last year pleaded for putting off the deadline, citing lack of funds.
The Russian government has earmaked $105 million this year to destroy chemical weapons. That's a six-fold increase compared to 2000, but it is still a small fraction of what Russia needs to fully meet its commitments. Pak said this week that the funding situation remained "extremely difficult."
Russian parliament speaker Gennady Seleznyov said Thursday that Russia is counting on the West to provide financial assistance.
Russia said it would cost $5 billion to $6 billion to dismantle the weapons and warned that it could not bear the cost alone. The United States and several European nations have made pledges totaling approximately $1.5 billion.
However, the U.S. House Armed Services Committee last fall passed legislation that effectively froze most of the $888 million pledged toward construction of the Shchuchye plant. Congress members argued that the national security benefit from the project was less than the U.S. administration had argued.
According to earlier plans, U.S. assistance would make Shchuchye the largest of seven disposal plants to be built in Russia. The facility must be able to process 5,400 tons of lethal agents including VX, the deadliest substance known to man. A single drop, inhaled or absorbed into the skin, kills in minutes.
So far, 174 countries have signed the Chemical Weapons Convention, which requires the elimination by 2012 of all stockpiles of nerve gases and compounds that are used in weapons of mass destruction. The United States already has eliminated about a quarter of its 31,500-ton arsenal.