Coffetoday Nov 28, 2010 – Russia will miss a 2012 deadline to destroy its chemical weapons, officials said when they launched a new large factory to dispose of it. Facilities at these Pochep, in the western Bryansk region, is the latest of several Russian factories built in recent years to dismantle chemical arsenals of the Cold War era – which is the world’s largest war.
As a signatory to the international Chemical Weapons Convention, the country has destroyed about half of chemical weapons, according to Russian officials.
The country faces an April 2012 deadline to destroy all its chemical weapons, but Viktor Kholstov, officials of the Russian Minister of Industry and Trade is responsible for chemical disarmament, that the country will require two or three more years. He said that the delay has been caused by a shortage of funds in the last two years. Russian Foreign Minister also issued a similar warning in August, saying that, because of the global financial crisis, Russia had experienced “difficulties financially and technically” that will extend the time needed to complete the demolition of chemical weapons stocks to be up to three years.
The U.S. has realized that the country would miss the deadline. Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller said at the UN last month that the U.S. has destroyed 78 percent of the inventory of chemical weapons and was speeding to destroy 90 percent of the arsenal that’s crashed in April 2012.
Ammunition is transferred from an armory near the plant where weapons were drilled, then a fuel neutralizing deadly material contained in it is added in it. Munitions will take three months in an underground storage before they will be burned in special furnaces at the same factory.