The OPCW-Director-General, Ambassador Ahmet Üzümcü, visited France on 1 October 2010 where he held high-level discussions with French officials in Paris and toured a storage facility for old chemical weapons* at a military camp in Suippes, region of Champagne.
In Paris Director-General Üzümcü met with two senior officials in the French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs – Mr Jacques Audibert, the Director General of Political and Security Affairs, and Mr Thomas Wagner, Counsellor to the Minister – and with Mme Marion Paradas, Director of International, Strategic and Technological Affairs in the Secretariat General of National Defence and Security. He also met with officials in the Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Interior, and Ministry of Economy, Industry and Labour.
The Director-General provided the French representatives an update on the status of implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). While in Paris he also addressed a meeting on chemical disarmament and implementation of the CWC that was convened by the Asia Centre, a research institute on international relations and Asia-Pacific affairs that was founded in 2005. Afterward he visited the military training camp in Suippes, where old chemical weapons that are discovered ad hoc on French territory are stored, and which also serves as a training facility for OPCW inspectors.
* Produced before 1925 and between 1925 and 1946
OPCW NEWS 29/2010 THE HAGUE, 4 OCTOBER 2010