#5
Izvestia
January 16, 2003
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]
WASHINGTON SPONSORS RUSSIA'S DISARMAMENT
Early next week President George W. Bush will instruct Congress to unfreeze
financial aid to Russia for the purpose of destorying surplus armaments and
ammunition, in compliance with international treaties. Moscow will receive $450
million as part of a threat reduction program known as the Nunn-Lugar Program.
One third of these funds will be spent on building a plant for destruction of
chemical weapons, near the town of Shchuchye in the Kurgan region.
Nikolai Bezborodov, deputy chairman of the Duma Defense Committee:
"Nearly a month ago, the Duma appealed to U.S. Congress for contributions
to extension of US-Russian cooperation in the sphere of chemical disarmament. We
are glad that our appeal was heard, for Bush issued his resolution after
consultations with members of Congress."
During the decade of the Nunn-Lugar Program's implementation, CIS member
states have received around $4 billion, of which $1.5 billion was provided for
Russia, to destroy surplus weapons and military hardware. This was enough to
destroy 6,032 warheads, 491 ballistic missiles, 101 strategic bombers and 25
nuclear strategic submarines.
Nonetheless, after the Bush administration took office in the White House the
program was declared inefficient and was frozen last year. Russian experts
believe that the reason for that was Moscow's delay in implementing the Chemical
Weapons Convention. Before 2002 the Russian federal budget allocated no more
than 500 million rubles for that purpose, which was just enough to maintain the
officials dealing with the problem. The U.S. administration decided to wait and
see whether Russia is prepared to meet its commitments.
Director of the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency Thomas Kenning says that
Congress members had a number of questions for the Russian authorities, which
the latter were not able to answer. But without answers to these questions, the
United States was not prepared to hand out more funds. According to Kenning, one
of the key problems was that Moscow had not completely disclose the amount of
available chemical weapons. Moreover, the United States would like to secure
Russia's permission to visit any chemical enterprise in Russia at its first
request. Until now, only the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical
Weapons has had the right to make such a demand.
President Bush's resolution has officially settled all these issues. Now
Russia can launch the construction of the plant in Shchuchye, which will enable
it to destroy around two million shells and warheads for chemical-loaded
tactical missiles. According to Mr. Bezborodov, funds provided by the United
States will be spent primarily on establishing an effective safety system and
ensuring security for facilities storing chemical weapons.
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