MOSCOW. Nov 11 (Interfax-AVN) - Russia stands for the principle of reasonable sufficiency with regards to inspecting chemical weapons disposal facilities, Alexander Gorbovsky, head of the Managing Directorate in the Conventional Problems and Disarmament Programs Center, said on Thursday.
"The major problem facing Russia in the sphere of international inspections consists in the principle of reasonable sufficiency of inspecting chemical weapons disposal facilities," he said at the two-day forum "Russia's Compliance with the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons: Current State and Prospects by the End of 2004", being held in Moscow.
Gorbovsky noted that in 1993 when the Convention was signed the expenditures on international inspections of Russian facilities were assessed at $500 million for the following decade of enforcing the Convention. In 1997 this sum reduced down to $220 million, when the international inspection mechanisms were worked out in more detail.
"International inspections, conducted since 1998, have proved that inspection mechanisms may be streamlined even further and that Russia may reduce expenditures on chemical weapons disposal facilities control," Gorbovsky said.
He noted that the technical secretariat of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was conducting corresponding work with this end in view, establishing technical control systems involving contemporary video monitoring devices, which allow the number of OPCW inspectors to be reduced, thus, decreasing overall expenditures.
"This approach has been realized at the chemical weapons disposal facility in the village of Gorny in the Saratov region, which allowed the number of inspectors in a team to be reduced from eight to five," Gorbovsky said.
According to him, expenditures on inspecting a single Russian chemical weapons disposal facility amount to up to $1.5 million a year.
In compliance with the Convention, all expenditures, pertaining to inspecting chemical weapons facilities, are footed by the state inspected.