OPCW Director-General Addresses the Ninth Global Green Legacy Forum in Washington, D.C.

At the invitation of Global Green USA, the Director-General of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Ambassador Rogelio Pfirter, delivered the keynote address to the Ninth Global Green USA Legacy Forum held at the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C. on 23 September 2005.

Green Cross International, founded by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1993, and Global Green USA, the Green Cross International affiliate based in the United States, combat weapons of mass destruction through community projects, public policy initiatives, and public education. The annual Legacy Forum brings together government officials, arms control experts, and community representatives for a day of discussion and exchange on chemical weapons destruction efforts in the Russian Federation and the United States, local perspectives on chemical weapons destruction, the role of the G-8 Global Partnership in demilitarization, and new approaches to threat reduction. The 2005 Legacy Forum focused on chemical weapons and weapons of mass destruction cooperative threat reduction and was co-sponsored by the United States Representatives, the Honorable John Spratt, South Carolina, and the Honorable Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania, both Members of the House of Representatives’ Armed Services Committee.

In his keynote address to the Legacy Forum, Director-General Pfirter provided an overview of the role of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) in the total elimination of an entire category of weapons of mass destruction and the OPCW’s global verification of chemical demilitarization. He commended the substantial investment made by the United States in its destruction programme and welcomed the increased speed of destruction by both the Russian Federation and the United States.

Ambassador Pfirter expressed on behalf of the OPCW his appreciation for the technical and financial support granted by those OPCW Member States participating in the G8’s Global Partnership against the Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction to speed the safe and timely destruction of the Russian Federation’s declared stockpile. He urged OPCW Member States to further accelerate and expand this support as the destruction deadlines were drawing closer.

OPCW Director-General Pfirter reiterated the importance of destroying the global stockpile, amounting to 71,000 metric tons of chemical weapons, under international verification and within the CWC’s deadlines, to eliminate the threat posed by this enormous stockpile and further strengthen the global chemical weapons ban, providing an incentive to all nations to declare and destroy chemical weapons.

51/2005

Categories: Disarmament, Non-proliferation of chemical weapons, Outreach