At the invitation of the Republic of Singapore, the Director-General of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Ambassador Rogelio Pfirter, paid an official visit to Singapore on 27 November 2006. During his visit, he delivered the keynote address to the Fifth Singapore International Symposium on Protection against Toxic Substances (SISPAT), which was held in conjunction with the First International Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Explosives Operations Conference. The Symposium has been organized by the DSO National Laboratories of Singapore since 1997, bringing together scientists, engineers and professionals engaged in research and development in the field of protection against toxic chemicals.
In his keynote address to the Symposium, Director-General Pfirter provided an overview of the Chemical Weapons Convention’s implementation, including the OPCW’s assistance efforts to enhance national protection against a threat or attack from chemical weapons.
Ambassador Pfirter noted that the threat from chemical terrorism is a global concern since toxic chemical compounds can be acquired throughout the world and the know-how to produce simple chemical weapons has been widely available for decades. He called upon the scientific community to play a leading role in developing a binding code of ethics that will help ensure that their work cannot bring harm and is kept out of the hands of those pursuing means to threaten peace and security in the world.
Given the international scale of this challenge, Director-General Pfirter stated that this latent threat can only be adequately addressed through a coordinated and continuous commitment from all nations and relevant international organizations to maintain an effective response capacity in the event of chemical attack.
Director-General Pfirter recalled that the United Nations’ Global Counter Terrorism Strategy calls upon the OPCW to cooperate within its mandate with the United Nations’ in order to prevent chemical terrorism, underscoring the Chemical Weapons Convention’s role in denying terrorists’ access to toxic chemicals.
PR89 / 2006