UK completes destruction of old chemical weapons - official
IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency
London, March 27, IRNA
UK-Chemical Weapons
Britain has finally destroyed the last of its holdings of old chemical weapons, Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram declared Tuesday.
Ingram said that his government has met its "obligations under the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention" (CWC) ahead of next month's 10th anniversary of when the treaty came into force.
"Our goal is a world without chemical weapons and so we call upon all states to abandon their chemical weapons programs and destroy their stockpiles, including legacy weapons," he said.
To demonstrate that these weapons have been consigned to history, the minister said he was presenting a commemorative chemical weapon shell from the Second World War to the Imperial War Museum in London.
In total, 3812 old chemical weapons have been destroyed by Britain by disposal teams and the technical experts at the defence laboratories at Porton Down in western England since it gave up an offensive capability in the 1950s.
The Ministry of Defence said that "if further small quantities of such weapons are unearthed in the future, they too will be destroyed." To date, 182 states have signed up to the 1997 convention, most recently Libya, while Iraq - which is one of only 13 states yet to join - has said that it will sign up in the near future.
Since the CWC came into force, Britain has boasted of playing a leading role in helping achieve its aim of banning all chemical weapons. It is estimated that some 2.67 million munitions have now been destroyed worldwide.
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