The United States has completed the destruction of all its chemical weapons reserves this Friday, a milestone that according to the president, Joe Biden, brings “one more step closer to a world free of the horrors” of these types of weapons.
The last two depots were in Pueblo County, Colorado, where there was some 2,600 tons of mustard gas in about 780,000 munitions, and in eastern Kentucky.
The first destroyed its last weapons in June and the second, called the Blue Grass Army Depot, was completed this Friday. The latter originally contained 523 tons of sarin, mustard and VX gas in shells and rockets.
File image of the weapons depot at Blue Grass Army Depot (Kentucky). US Army via AP
“The United States has worked tirelessly for more than 30 years to eliminate its arsenal of chemical weapons. Today I am proud to announce that it has safely destroyed the last of the munitions in that arsenal,” Biden said in a statement. announcement.
The Democratic president has stressed that successive administrations had determined that these weapons should neither be further developed nor deployed.
The complete destruction of the arsenal, he added, not only fulfills the commitment acquired with the Convention on Chemical Weapons, which precisely vetoes their development, production, storage, transfer and use, but also makes it “the first time that an international organization verifies the destruction of a whole category of weapons declared of mass destruction”.
The Chemical Weapons Convention entered into force in 1997.
“I thank the thousands of Americans who gave their time and talent to this noble and challenging mission,” added Biden, who has urged those countries that have not ratified that convention to do so so that the global veto on that weaponry “can reach its full potential”.
The Chemical Weapons Convention entered into force in 1997 and, according to its website, gave the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) “the mandate to eradicate forever the scourge of chemical weapons and to verify the destruction , within the established deadlines, of the declared stockpiles of chemical weapons”.
The headquarters of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague. AP Photo/Peter Dejong, File
The OPCW specifies that 193 States have committed themselves to the Convention and that 98% of the world’s population lives under its protection.
“Russia and Syria should return to complying with the Convention and admit their undeclared programs, which have been used to commit atrocities and brazen attacks. (…) Together with our partners, we will not stop until we can finally and forever free the world of this scourge,” Biden stressed.
From World War I to 1968
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) points out on its website that the United States produced chemical weapons from World War I (1914-1918) and until 1968 as a deterrent against similar weapons used by other countries.
File image of a container containing mustard gas at a Colorado warehouse. AP Photo/David Zalubowski
These weapons reached nearly 40,000 tons in the United States by the end of the sixties and were stored in a total of 9 warehouses in different parts of the country.
Although they had never been used on the battlefield, the CDC adds, they had become outdated and deteriorated over time.
2023-07-08 01:25:40
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