America Has Destroyed All Its Chemical Weapons Said Biden 2023
America Has Destroyed All Its Chemical Weapons Said Biden 2023
President Joe Biden announced Friday that the United States has completely destroyed its decades-old stockpile of chemical weapons, fulfilling a commitment under the three-year Chemical Weapons Convention. “Today, I am proud to announce that the United States has safely destroyed the last weapon in that stockpile – taking us one step closer to a world free of the horrors of chemical weapons,” said Biden.
“Declared” stockpiles, although some are believed to maintain secret stockpiles of chemical weapons. “This is the first time that an international body has verified the destruction of an entire class of declared weapons of mass destruction,” Biden said in a statement.
The Blue Grass Army Depot, a US Army facility in Kentucky, recently completed its four-year task of eliminating nearly 500 tons of the deadly chemical agent, the last batch the US military had.
The US had stockpiles of artillery projectiles and rockets containing mustard gas, VX and sarin nerve agents and blister agents for decades. Such weapons were widely condemned after their use on the battlefields of World War I with dire consequences.
But many countries retained them and developed them in later years. The Chemical Weapons Convention, agreed in 1993 and entered into force in 1997, gives the United States until September 30 of that year to destroy all its chemical agents and weapons. America Has Destroyed All Its Chemical Weapons Said Biden 2023
The organization’s head, Fernando Arias, said that others who signed the agreement had already liquidated their stakes. For the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), said in May. Only the United States was left to fulfill this task, he said. “
Over 70,000 tonnes of the world’s most dangerous poison has been destroyed under the supervision of the OPCW.” They said. According to the US Arms Control Association, in 1990 the United States had approximately 28,600 tons of chemical weapons, the world’s second largest stockpile after Russia.
With the end of the Cold War, the superpowers and other countries came together to negotiate chemicals. Weapons Conference. Eliminating the stockpile, doubly dangerous because it meant neutralizing not only the chemical agents but also the weapons they contained, was a slow process. Russia completed the destruction of its own declared stockpile in 2017. America Has Destroyed All Its Chemical Weapons Said Biden 2023.
By April 2022, the US had less than 600 tons left to destroy. Biden urged continued monitoring to destroy all chemical weapons around the world and said a handful of countries that have not joined the convention should do so. “Russia and Syria must return to compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention and acknowledge their undeclared programs, which have been used to commit brazen atrocities and attacks,” Biden said.
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