moscow

The Russian parliament last week ratified the United Nations convention on chemical weapons, originally signed in Paris in January 1993, despite opposition from critics who complained that Russia cannot afford the costs of destroying its stock of weapons. Soon after, the decree formalizing ratification was signed by President Boris Yeltsin.

Ratification had been actively supported in the Duma, the lower house, by the committee on international affairs and its chairman, Vladimir Lukin, who said that his position was shared by most members of the security and defence committees. The leaders of the factions and deputies' groups — including communists and the Liberal Democratic party — also supported the move.

Igor Ivanov, first deputy minister of foreign affairs, warned that refusal to ratify the convention would be used by Russia's enemies “whose number is still great” as one more reason for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to move eastwards. Sanctions against Russian exports of chemical products would follow, as well as reduced foreign investment in its chemical industry.

Anatoly Kvashnin, the general staff commander, argued that the greatest threat from Russia's chemical weapons is now to the country itself, rather than its potential enemies, as the storage time of the weapons has long expired. “We need to destroy them to avoid an ecological catastrophe,” he said.

But strong opposition to ratification came from the Duma's committee on industry, building, transport and power engineering. Stepan Sulakshin, its deputy chairman, who was for many years a scientific worker at the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) in Tomsk, said that destroying all the chemical weapons in Russia would cost 34,400 billion rubles (US$6 billion).

In 1994 and 1995, when Russia started to meet a presidential commitment to liquidate its chemical weapons, only 9.8 billion and 26.9 billion rubles respectively had been allocated to the task, and in 1996 there was no financing at all. In 1997 only 163.8 billion rubles was allocated.

The proposed budget for 1998 suggests that the equivalent of $100 million, rather than the $500 million needed, will be allocated. “Russia has no money to destroy its chemical weapons in 10 years, as demanded by the convention,” Sulakshin told the Duma. “Foreign countries promised to consider supplying us with a little over $100 million after the convention was ratified by Russia, but no agreement has been signed. Under these conditions, the ratification of the convention will ruin Russia.”

He also said that Russia lacks reliable technology for destroying chemical weapons. Until now, the maximum weight of chemical ammunition destroyed at the laboratories was less than 50 grams, while more than 40 tonnes are to be liquidated. The destruction programme has also failed to pass environmental criteria, even though four Duma committees had insisted on this.

“The RAS suggestion to use the economic physical methods of plasma destruction was not adopted,” Sulakshin said. But the Duma rejected his arguments and gave its support to the convention.