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The United Nations implementing body for the 1997 international Chemical Weapons Convention, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague, announced today that Iraq has just acceded to the treaty regime and become the 186th State Party. Global Green USA, the US national affiliate of Mikhail Gorbachev’s Green Cross International, which has worked closely with US, Russian, and international authorities for over fifteen years to help eliminate chemical weapons globally, welcomes this historic moment in the Convention’s expansion and congratulates Iraq for its entry into the global disarmament regime.

Dr. Paul F. Walker, Director of Global Green USA’s Security and Sustainability Program, emphasized that “Iraq’s accession to the CWC is a major milestone in the universality of the international treaty regime and in banning a whole class of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East and across the globe.” He added: “With the recent accession of Lebanon in November 2008, and now Iraq in January, international pressure must be placed on the four remaining non-member countries in the Middle East region – Egypt, Israel, Somalia, and Syria – as well as North Korea to join the international weapons ban.”

Under the former regime of Saddam Hussein, Iraq was widely condemned for using chemical weapons in the long Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s and for indiscriminately killing and maiming some 30,000 of its own citizens in the Kurdish region of Iraq in 1988. After the 1991 Gulf War, United Nations inspection teams destroyed Iraq’s remaining weapons of mass destruction and the 1993 US invasion and occupation of Iraq confirmed that no nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons existed in Iraq.

Iraq now has thirty days to declare any remnants of its former chemical weapons production facilities and stockpile to the OPCW for inspection and elimination. All CWC States Parties are prohibited from development, production, stockpiling, and use of chemical weapons and are obligated to safely destroy, under OPCW inspection and verification, all remaining facilities and weapons. Iraq will officially become a State Party on February 12, 2009. To date six countries – Albania, India, Libya, South Korea, Russia, and the United States – have declared themselves as possessor states with arsenals holding over 78,000 tons (US) of chemical agents. Both Albania and South Korea have completed their destruction programs over the past 18 months, and India will finish in 2009. The United States has destroyed about 59% (18,500 tons) of its 31,500 declared tons (US), and Russia about 30% (13,000 tons) of its 44,000 declared tons (US) of chemical agents. This leaves about 45,000 declared tons (US) still to be destroyed globally.

Walker pointed out also that “should Iraq have some legacy weapons, agents, or facilities in need of careful demilitarization, this would be an opportune time for the US State and/or Defense Departments and the G-8 Global Partnership to step in and help with their elimination.” The United States has committed over $1 billion under its Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR or “Nunn-Lugar”) Program over the past 15 years to help Russia with elimination of its CW stockpile, especially at an arsenal near the village of Shchuch’ye in the Kurgan Oblast with 5,400 tons of nerve agents in some two million artillery shells. The US was also part of an international effort, along with Switzerland and Germany, to help Albania destroy its CW stockpile in 2006 and 2007, and has also helped Libya with its destruction efforts.

Global Green USA has established an international NGO Coalition to support proactive engagement by non-governmental organizations in the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague and promote “universality” and national implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention. Walker said: “Iraq’s treaty accession will make our work easier. There are only nine remaining countries now in the world which need to join the CWC in order to make it the first truly universal treaty. It would be a major step forward in global arms control and disarmament and an example for other treaties to follow, such as the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the Biological Weapons Convention.”