2023-07-08 09:28:45
Under the terms of the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, the United States had until September 30 to destroy all of its munitions and chemical agents.
Posted on 07/08/2023 08:54 Updated on 07/08/2023 11:28
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Hiroshima (Japan) police search for traces of chemical weapons on the train at the station, February 16, 2023. (KYODO / MAXPPP)
“An important step”, welcomed the OPCW. The United States announced on Friday July 7 that it had completed the destruction of its last chemical weapons. All declared stocks have been “irreversibly destroyed”, assured the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Under the terms of the 1997 Convention on the prohibition of these weapons, the United States had until September 30 to destroy all its munitions and chemical agents.
The last M55 rocket loaded with sarin, a nerve agent, was destroyed on July 7 at the US Army’s “Blue Grass” depot in Kentucky, the Pentagon said. For decades, the United States has maintained stockpiles of artillery and rocket ammunition containing mustard gas, or nerve or nerve agents like sarin and VX.
Mustard gas, sarin, VX
The use of such weapons was widely decried following their horrific effects were exposed to the world in the trenches of the First World War. But many countries retained and further developed their chemical weapons programs in the years that followed. In a statement, President Joe Biden encouraged the handful of countries still outside the 1997 Convention to sign it, so that “the global ban on chemical weapons is reaching its full potential”.
“Russia and Syria must once once more comply with the Convention and recognize their undeclared programs, which have been used to commit atrocities and brazen attacks”launched the American president. “More challenges are waiting”, reacted the director-general of the OPCW. With Angola, North Korea, Egypt, and South Sudan, “four countries have yet to join the Convention”he pointed out.
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