KYIV. Sept 18 (Interfax-AVN) - The United States will continue financing the processing of solid fuel at the Pavlograd plant in the Dnipropetrovsk region in line with a collective reduction of threats program, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Edward Herbst told a news conference in Kyiv on Thursday.
The United States is prepared to honor its commitments on the Pavlodar project and is engaged in talks on future activities there, he said.
The processing of solid rocket fuel is being conducted in the framework of the October 25, 1993 agreement between Ukraine and the United States on the Elimination of Strategic Weapons.
At the end of 2000, Congress appropriated nearly USD24m to the construction of a plant for processing solid fuel from SS-24 rockets. A pilot plant became operational in Pavlograd in 2002. The construction of a full-scale plant was to start in 2003 and be brought to completion in 2004. The entire quantity of solid fuel in Ukraine, nearly 5,000 tonnes, was to be eliminated by the end of 2007.
Ukraine inherited 130 SS-19 missiles and 54 SS-24 missions from the strategic arsenal of the Soviet Union. All nuclear warheads were removed from the missiles and transported to Russia in the framework of nuclear disarmament. Later the fuel for nuclear power plants obtained from the warheads was returned to Ukraine. The last nuclear warhead was taken out of Ukraine in July 1996.
In 2001, Russia and Ukraine signed a memorandum on cooperation in disposing of SS-24 and RSM-52 solid-fuel strategic missiles. The document provides for scrapping first sections of Russian SS-24 strategic missiles in Pavlodar.
On June 10, the U.S. embassy reported that the funding of the Pavlodar project had been suspended. The U.S. later announced its intention to consider alternative variants of processing solid rocket fuel from SS-24 missiles at the Pavlograd chemical plant.