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C O M M E N T A R Y
ELIMINATION OF RUSSIAN CHEMICAL STOCKPILES: AMERICAN ASSISTANCE ARRIVES WITH RESERVATIONS

MOSCOW, AUGUST 29 /from RIA Novosti's military observer Viktor Litovkin/ - On Thursday, Russian defense minister Sergei Ivanov received American senator Richard Lugar. The meeting took place in the Defense Ministry's building on the Arbat Square and lasted about 2 hours. The parties discussed the state of implementation of the program of US assistance to Russia in eliminating stockpiles of chemical and other mass destruction weapons, as well as reduction of strategic offensive armaments provided for by the START-1 Treaty and utilization of the nuclear submarines out of service.

Senator Lugar, one of the co-authors of the US Cooperative Threat Reduction program better known in this country and abroad as the Nunn-Lugar program, has already visited Severodvinsk, where at the "Zvezdochka" ship-building works which built the complex to unload heat-generating assemblies from nuclear reactors of strategic submarines on US-allocated money. He also visited the docks near Murmansk where he familiarized himself with the process of utilization of nuclear submarines at the Nerpa works, visited the biological institute in Moscow which continues developing efficient vaccines against Siberian pox, travelled to the settlement of Surovatikha near Nizhny Novgorod to the base of elimination, in particular, of the Russian heaviest (two hundred tons) liquid-fuelled intercontinental strategic missiles, SS-18 "Satana", according to the Western classification.

For as long as several years in a row the American congress has been allocating funds to eliminate Russian mass destruction weapons. According to Washington's calculations, they allocated not less than a billion and a half dollars. And it is not a charitable operation but, according to Americans themselves, the naked pragmatic move: if Russia eliminates its strategic arsenals, they will never threaten the USA.

The major part of funds allocated by the Congress was spent to ensure reliable control over the preservation and safety of nuclear weapons which were stationed at bases and arsenals of the 12th General Department of the Russian Defense Ministry, the country's only "owner" of all nuclear warheads. Under the Nunn-Lugar program it received, among other things, 300 computers to create a system of automatic inventory of special ammunitions. Apart from that, the Russian side was presented with 10 Polygraphs, better known as "lie detectors", to check executive personnel and 5 sets of equipment to check use of narcotics by the same personnel. And Americans supplied 100 specially protected railway freight cars to transport missile heads, and 18 cars for accompanying guards and other equipment.

According to General Igor Valynkin, chief of the 12th Department, Russia was grateful for the assistance provided by the overseas disarmament partners. However, today Russia is facing an urgent problem of eliminating chemical weapons. It has accumulated 40,000 tons of it. In addition, under the Chemical Weapons Convention, our country is to eliminate its chemical stockpiles by 2007.

Many countries are rendering great assistance to Russia in its effort, first of all Germany and other European Union countries. The first stage of the facility to utilize the stocks of lewisite in the settlement of Gorny in the Sverdlovsk region was built with their financial support. In December, the line to detoxify and eliminate the stock of mustard gas, another dermatovescical poisonous substance, will be put into operation. But there are problems with construction of a similar facility in the settlement of Schyuchiye of the Kurgan region where 5,400 metric tons of sarin, soman and VX gases, organophosphorous poisonous nerve-paralytic substances, are hidden in missile warheads, artillery charges and mines.

Americans volunteered to help Russia build this facility. And though at a meeting in Canada G-8 leaders promised to allocate Russia, in the next 10 years, USD 20 billion (of which Washington intended to allocate USD 10 billion) to eliminate mass destructions weapons, the US Congress has kept refusing to allocate the sum. American representatives claim Russia has not fully implemented its obligations to declare the total amount of its chemical stockpiles and to present information regarding what and how it intends to deal with the final products of processing of poisonous substances, a US general reminded the RIA Novosti observer that at the presentation of the Gorny facility.

Zinovy Pak, general director of the Munitions Agency, the organization responsible for elimination of chemical weapons in this country, refutes the claims. He describes them as "groundless". He states: "We have no other combat poisonous substances but the declared ones. And we long ago presented our plans to Americans. If they do not want to help us, let them say that openly. We will cope with that ourselves. One should not only confuse matters." During their meeting defense minister Sergei Ivanov and Senator Richard Lugar talked about the problem of the arsenal in Schyuchiye of the Kurgan region. May be they considered that in more diplomatic phrases than those which Zinovy Pak allowed himself to use. But that does not change the essence of the matter. Russia wants clarity. And probably its partners, despite the provided assistance, have a slight deficit of that.

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