The information comes from Senator Valentin Zavadnikov. He is state commission member, and leads the Federation Council committee for industrial policies. "I think our Western partners' conduct ought to be more correct," he remarked.
The state commission held session, last July, to take stock of chemical weapon destruction efforts. The conferees said they were alarmed with financing a related programme. Expert consultations with the federal government followed to bring a resolution, on which federal target allocations were doubled. 11.16 billion roubles has been earmarked for next year, as against this year's 5.3 billion, roughly US$180 million. With such financing, Russia will afford to comply with the Convention on Chemical Arms Prohibition as its implementation reaches a second stage, 2007.
The Federation Council made a parliamentary inquiry, October 13, with Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov to express its alarm as the Russian chemical arms destruction programme was badly underfinanced.
"Inadequate financing also hampers construction of chemical arms destruction projects. Only one, in Gorny, Saratov Region, has been commission for now out of a total six blueprinted," says the inquiry.
More than that, Russia has received this year a token 3 per cent of sums internationally earmarked as target financial aid to Russia, the document goes on emphatically.
As the international Convention on the Prohibition of Development, Manufacture, Stockpiling, Use and Proliferation of Chemical Arms has it, Russia is to destroy, by 2007, 20 per cent of all chemical arsenals it has inherited from the USSR. The arsenals must be entirely destroyed before 2012.
The convention, which Russia ratified in 1997, schedules four destruction stages. The first concerns 1 per cent of the entire stock, the second 20 per cent, the third 45 per cent, and the last all remaining weaponry.
Russia possesses lump 40,000 tonnes of chemical agents, stocked up in seven arsenals all over the country. Kambarka has 15.9% of the whole; Gorny 2.9%; Kizner, Udmurt Republic, 14.2%; Maradykovsky, Kirov Region, 17.4%; Pochep, Bryanch Region, 18.8%; Leonidovka, Penza Region, 17.2%; and Schuchye, Kurgan Region, 13.6%.
