MOSCOW. Jan 15 (Interfax-AVN) - U.S. financial aid under the auspices of the Nunn-Lugar program demothballed by the U.S. president's decision will be mainly directed at the construction of a chemical weapons scrapping plant in the Shchuchye village in the Kurgan region, a prominent Russian lawmaker said on Wednesday.
"A month ago the State Duma (lower house of Russian parliament - Interfax-AVN) applied to the U.S. Congress asking to contribute to the expansion of the Russian-U.S. cooperation in the sphere of chemical disarmament. And we are happy that our application was heard the U.S. president made his decision after consultations with lawmakers. The bulk of U.S. financial aid will be directed at the completion of the chemical weapons destruction plant," Major General Nikolai Bezborodov, deputy chairman of the Duma defense committee and member of the state commission on chemical disarmament, told Interfax-Military News Agency.
According to him, the United States will provide USD160m for the plant construction in Shchuchye this year. "Taking into account RUB5.3bn (USD166.56m) allocated from the Russian budget and aid of foreign countries, we get RUB12bn (USD377.12m) which Russia needs annually to meet its obligations in the chemical weapons scrapping sphere," Bezborodov noted.
He stressed that the rest of the declared USD450m is likely to be used for the establishment of an efficient protection system at WMD storage sites, in particular, for equipping storehouses and modernizing security systems. The problem is especially acute in the sphere of recent attempts of international terrorists to grab a hold of WMD.
The decade-long Nunn-Lugar program provides for allocating substantial funds for the destruction of Russian nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. In spring 2002, U.S. President George W. Bush declined to certify the program for the first time ever citing suspicions that Russia does not provide full data on its chemical weapons stockpiles. As a result, the funding of contracts for the scrapping of Russian WMD was suspended for eight months. U.S. lawmakers found a way out of the deadlock. They passed the bill under which the president is to certify the program every three years, not annually, as before.