Russia needs five billion dollars to destroy chemical stockpile: officials

MOSCOW (AFP) Oct 02, 2003
Russia will require no less than five billion dollars (4.3 billion euros) to eliminate its chemical weapon stockpile, the federal ammunition agency told the Russian government Thursday.

The agency presented its report to a government session devoted to the destruction of Russia's chemical arms, a program the agency considered "unique in scale and political importance," the RIA-Novosti news agency reported.

Russia still has a stockpile of 40,000 tonnes of chemical warheads. It has stated its intention to destroy 20 percent of the stockpile by 2007 and eliminate it by 2012.

But so far the project is off to a sluggish start, with only 400 tonnes of chemical arms, or one percent of the total, destroyed in the first phase of the program.

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