OPCW Executive Council Approves Recommendation to Allow for Conversion of Former Chemical Weapon Facility in Libya

18 October 2004

The 38th Session of the Executive Council of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has recommended to all States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) the adoption of a change to Part V of the Verification Annex of the CWC, allowing for a former chemical weapons production facility (CWPF), declared by the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, to be converted to purposes not prohibited by the Convention. This recommendation by the Executive Council does not alter the text of the articles of the CWC.

The Convention had foreseen that, in exceptional cases that fulfill the criterion of a compelling need, a former CWPF may be converted to peaceful purposes, rather than destroyed, and this converted facility will be subject to the CWC verification regime. In compliance with the timelines specified by the Convention, this conversion would have to have been completed within six years after the Convention’s Entry into Force, i.e., by 29 April 2003. In order to provide an incentive to those States that have not as yet joined the Convention, as well as those that have recently joined and declared former CWPF’s, the Council has recommended that this change be made. This proposal is made to further the universality of the Convention, since such conversion requests can be approved under exceptional circumstances although the timelines have already passed.

The Council’s recommendation marks a positive step, enabling the OPCW’s penultimate decision-making organ, the Conference of the State Parties, to consider the request by the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya to approve its request for the conversion of a former CWPF to peaceful purposes. In this case, it is foreseen that the facility would be utilized to produce low-cost vaccines and medicines for diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis for the African continent. The CWC entered into force for Libya on 5 February 2004.

In his address to the 38th Session, OPCW Director-General, Ambassador Rogelio Pfirter, recognized the dedication and the thorough and professional manner in which the Libyan authorities have been working with the OPCW. He noted further that rapid progress has been made in the destruction of the Libyan declared Category 3 chemical weapons, and on its plans for the destruction of its Category 2 chemical weapons. Ambassador Pfirter welcomed the Executive Council’s recommendation to approve the change to the Convention as an “eminently sensible way of resolving the problem and paving the way for what we all, starting with the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, want: to have done with Libyan chemical weapons once and for all. The proposal allows for this process to take place under strict monitoring and in this sense it also reinforces the Convention’s regime.” The Director-General also emphasized the lofty humanitarian purpose to which the plant will be turned once converted.

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