MOSCOW, August 31 (AVN) - Sergei Kiriyenko, chairman of the state commission on chemical disarmament and presidential envoy to the Volga federal district, will lead the Russian delegation during the second leg of its tour through the G-7 nations and the Hague next week.
The delegation, which includes Zinovy Pak, deputy chairman of the commission and director general of the Russian Ammunition Agency, and Valery Syomin, main advisor to the Interior Ministry department on security and disarmament, has just returned from Tokyo. It will visit Washington on September 10 to 11, Rome on September 17, Paris on September 18 to 19, and Berlin on September 20 to 21.
The main aim of the trip is to present Russia's new chemical weapons scrapping problem to foreign partners, Kiriyenko told the Military News Agency on Thursday. The document envisages prolongation of the scrapping terms for five years.
According to Kiriyenko, prolongation will not violate the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of All Types of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction. The scrapping terms can be prolonged for five years with the consent of foreign partners and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. The voting in the organisation is scheduled for May 2002.
"We started acting beforehand because we understand that the issue is very complicated," Kiriyenko said. According to him, the revised chemical weapons scrapping programme will be considered by the organisation's executive council in the Hague on September 25 and 26. "We believe that the leading G-7 nations should get this data fist hand before the Hague session," Kiriyenko added.