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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Webster Groves who wrote (18260)	2/8/2002 7:57:32 AM
From: maceng2	Respond to of 281500

Kiriyenko: U.S. to Free Arms Funds By David Ljunggren Reuters OTTAWA -- Russia and the United States have agreed in principle that Washington will soon unfreeze $620 million in much-needed funds designed to help destroy Moscow's huge arsenal of chemical weapons, said Sergei Kiriyenko, the chairman of the state commission for chemical disarmament. Kiriyenko said Wednesday that he hoped a final deal on the money would be completed by the time U.S. President George W. Bush visits Moscow in May. The United States, alarmed by the fate of Russia's 40,000-ton stockpile of nerve and chemical agents, agreed in 1996 to give Moscow about $800 million to help finance its destruction. But it froze the money in 1999, complaining Russia was not sticking to its end of the bargain. Kiriyenko visited Washington last week for talks that he said had broken the logjam. As part of the deal two senior U.S. delegations will visit Russia in the near future, he said. "We have a general agreement that by the time President Bush visits Russia in May, the process of unfreezing the funds should have been completed," he said in an interview during an official visit to Canada. "In principle we have now agreed on the political level that this problem is no more. We still need work at the expert level. A big group of U.S. experts from the State and Defense departments will arrive in Russia Feb. 26 charged to carry out consultations." Russia is now working on a special installation at Shchuchye in western Siberia, which is intended to destroy the bulk of the chemical arsenal. "A group of congressmen also want to visit in March to see what's happening at the Russian installations. We'll have something to show them," Kiriyenko said. Russia says it has already destroyed all of its category three chemical weapons -- the lowest -- ahead of schedule and will also have disposed of the category two weapons earlier than planned. This leaves the bulk of Russia's arsenal, which it inherited from the Soviet Union. That is about 30,000 tons of category one toxic agents such as sarin, soman, tabun, VX, sulphur mustards and lewisites. Kiriyenko said there was no chance of destroying the entire stockpile by April 2007, as originally envisaged, given that the earliest the Shchuchye plant would be ready is 2005. Moscow last year proposed extending the deadline to 2012. themoscowtimes.com