The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has announced that it will contribute a substantial amount of funds towards the operationalisation of the chemical weapons destruction facility at Kizner, in the Russian Federation. This contribution is part of the United Kingdom’s commitment to the Global Partnership against the Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction and in this context up to U.S. $100M will go to assist Russia with the destruction of its chemical weapons (CW) stockpile.
Currently, the United Kingdom is providing approximately £25M in financial assistance for the completion of the construction of the chemical weapons destruction facility at Shchuch’ye, where Russia is to destroy nearly 2 million weapons by 2012. The Kizner project will see the destruction of a further 2 million chemical weapons.
Minister of State for the United Kingdom’s Armed Forces, the Rt. Hon Adam Ingram, said: “I am delighted to announce that the MOD will take a leading international role in assisting Russia with chemical weapon destruction at this new site. Together, working with Russia and other international donors, we are making a real difference, helping to make the world safer by eliminating these terrible weapons.”
Russia and five other countries in possession of chemical weapons have pledged under the CWC to eliminate their weapons stockpile.
The Director-General of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Ambassador Rogelio Pfirter, commended the United Kingdom’s strong and unwavering commitment to multilateral disarmament. He noted that the significant sums invested by the United Kingdom and other OPCW Member States in Russia’s destruction programme were of vital importance to supplementing Russia’s efforts at chemical disarmament. Director-General Pfirter expressed his gratitude to the United Kingdom for its resolve to achieve the Chemical Weapons Convention’s objective of the complete elimination of chemical weapons from the world.
PR42 / 2006