India Destroys Stockpile of Chemical Weapons

NEW DELHI, May 15 (PNA/Bernama) -- India has revealed that it has destroyed its chemical weapons stockpile, keeping its promise to the international community to completely eliminate its weapons by March this year.

The IANS (Indo-Asian News Service) reported that India informed the Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) that it had destroyed its stockpile on March 26, fulfilling its obligation to the arms control agreement.

"The OPCW inspectors finalized all necessary on-site activities to allow termination of systematic verification of destruction, and ceased their physical presence at the facility as of the end of March 2009.

"In addition, our inspectors confirmed the completion of destruction of the former chemical weapons production facility, which had been temporarily converted for chemical weapons destruction purposes," Michael Luhan, OPCW's head of Media and Public Affairs, told IANS.

India now becomes the third country, besides South Korea and Albania, to get rid of chemical weapons.

In 1997, India declared that it had a stockpile of 1,044 tons of sulphur mustard and that less than two percent of the chemical was used in artillery shells at that time and the balance was stored in bulk containers, reported IANS.

India, which became a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1993, started to reduce its reserve in several phases from 1999 and by 2008 it declared that 75 percent of its stock had been destroyed, and promised to destroy the balance by this year.