Russia Accuses US of Deliberately Delaying Scrapping Own Chemical Weapons

The United States is deliberately pushing back the deadline for the complete destruction of its own chemical arsenals, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said Thursday in a commentary on the January 23 Paris meeting of the so-called International Partnership Against Impunity for the Use of Chemical Weapons.

"It was at the insistence of the United States that the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons [CWC] once established an unrealistically ambitious deadline for the global destruction of chemical weapons arsenals — by 2007. It is clear now that this goal has not been achieved. But more than a decade has passed since then, and the majority of the signatories, including us, have managed to fulfill their obligations," Ryabkov said.

However, the United States, which undoubtedly possess all the necessary financial, production and scientific and...