§ Mr. SillarsTo ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how many sessions of the Geneva conference on disarmament for a global chemical weapons convention have been held to date; and if he will list the participating states.
§ Mr. WaldegraveThe Conference on Disarmament, originally called the Committee on Disarmament, was established by the first United Nations special session on disarmament in 1978. It first met in 1979 and since then there have been two three-month sessions per year, thus totalling 22 sessions to date. The subject of chemical weapons has been on the conference's agenda from the outset. In 1983 additional shorter "inter-sessional" consultations specifically on chemical weapons were also established. There have been 11 such "inter-sessional" meetings to date.
The 40 members states of the Conference on Disarmament are Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burma, Canada, China, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Federal Republic of Germany, France, German Democratic Republic, Hungary, Italy, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Poland, Romania, Soviet Union, Sri Lanka, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States, Venezuela, Yugoslavia and Zaire. In addition, there are about 25 states holding observer status at the conference.
§ Mr. SillarsTo ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what are the latest Soviet responses to NATO requests for details and timescales of Soviet undertakings to destroy chemical warfare stocks.
§ Mr. WaldegraveMr. Shevardnadze announced in January that the Soviet Union would begin the destruction of its chemical weapons, CW, stockpiles in 1989 at a new facility in Chapayevsk which was being constructed for this purpose. No further information was given on the details and timescale of the destruction programme, but on 6 September it was announced that the Chapayevsk facility would not now be completed. Due to local environmentalist pressure it is to be converted to a "training centre for devising industrial methods for destroying toxic substances". No revised destruction programme has been announced but it appears unlikely that the Soviet Union will begin destruction this year. In contrast, the United States commenced its CW destruction programme in 1970 and has to date destroyed 15 million pounds of chemical weapon agent.