The United States last June pledged 10 billion dollars (8.5 billion euros) over the next decade to safeguard Russian chemical and nuclear weapons from preying terrorists, with another 10 billion dollars to come from other industrial nations in a plan known as "10 plus 10 over 10."

The president of the country's chemical weapons disarmament commission, Sergei Kiriyenko, warned however that Russian efforts to complete the second phase of its chemical weapons disposal programme were being complicated by US dilatoriness in releasing funds.

"The United States is adopting a policy of unfreezing the money for a year which then expires, and we then have to start discussions over again," the Interfax news agency quoted him as saying after a meeting of the disarmament commission held Monday.

Kiriyenko said in April that Russia had completed the first phase of its chemical weapons disposal programme, destroying 400 tonnes -- or one percent -- of its chemical weapons.

For the second phase, due to be completed by 2007, Russia risks failing to meet the deadline because of funding difficulties, and the commission is having to weigh up several options to take account of available resources, he said.

However the commission has decided to triple its present budget, Kiriyenko said.

"The main priority is antiterrorist and environmental security," Kiriyenko said as quoted by Interfax.

The commission's preferred choice is for the construction of a dismantling facility at Shchuchye in the Kurgan region in the southern Urals which he said "must be contructed together, we cannot do it alone."

A standby option at another facility was being envisaged because "Russia cannot risk a failure to meet its commitments even because of external circumstances," he said.

"In any event, we have to build all these facilities. The deadline for disposal is clear: no chemical weapons must remain on Russian territory by 2012," he said.

Russia has the world's largest chemical weapons stockpile, including stocks of sarin and VX nerve gas.

Dismantling its stocks of military plutonium and chemical weapons, seen as vulnerable to theft in the corruption-tainted post-Soviet era, was made a priority goal in international efforts to halt proliferation, prompting leaders at the G-7 summit at Kananaskis, in Canada, last year to offer up to 20 billion dollars in aid to dispose of them.

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