Moscow, Friday
RUSSIA'S parliament resisted international pressure to ratify a treaty banning chemical weapons today, saying it needed more time and Western cash to destroy its deadly stockpile.
Yesterday the United States Senate approved the pact, which has been signed by 164 countries and is due to come into effect next Tuesday.
The European Union urged Russia, which has huge stockpiles of chemical weapons, to follow the US lead. Britain and France also issued individual appeals.
The State Duma lower house of parliament discussed the treaty today, but instead of approving it deputies decided to send a statement to the other participating countries saying they would aim to ratify it in a few months' time.
The deputies also backed a draft law laying down how, but not when, Russia would destroy the weapons.
''The State Duma . . . has begun the process of ratifying the convention and intends to complete it, if possible this autumn, if the necessary conditions are met,'' said the statement, passed by 331 votes with none against. One deputy abstained.
''It's simple, there's a lack of cash,'' said Vladimir Lukin, head of the Duma's foreign affairs committee, who also accused President Boris Yeltsin of holding up the treaty.
''We have one of the biggest amounts of chemical weapons so we have to have understanding (from the West),'' he said.
The 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention, which took years to negotiate, aims to ban the production, stockpiling, transfer and use of chemical weapons worldwide.
The treaty obliges members to eliminate all chemical weapons and production facilities by 2007. China and Iran have signed but not ratified. Non-signatories include Iraq and Libya.
Viktor Danilov-Danilyan, head of the state committee for the environment, has said Russia has 40,000 tonnes of chemical weapons to destroy.
Lev Fyodorov, president of the Russian Union for Chemical Security, said today it would cost at least five billion dollars to destroy the weapons, Interfax news agency reported.-Reuter.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article