Joint team begin disposing Japan chemical weapons
(AP)
Updated: 2006-07-05 14:49 Japan occupied China's northeast, known in the West as Manchuria, from 1933
until its wartime defeat in 1945. Its retreating army abandoned an estimated
700,000 bombs and artillery shells loaded with mustard gas and other toxins,
mostly in the northeast.
There are about 60 such sites in China, Liu said.
The weapons are an enduring source of anger for Beijing, which says they have
killed at least 2,000 Chinese since 1945.
Under a 1997 international convention, Tokyo is committed to disposing of its
chemical weapons in China by 2007. But Liu said Beijing hopes to extend that by
five years because the two governments have excavated weapons but haven't begun
to destroy them.
"We're not satisfied with the speed of processing the abandoned chemical
weapons by the Japanese side in China," Liu said.
Liu said Tokyo blamed the slowness of the process on lack of adequate numbers
of chemical weapons experts and the complicated conditions in areas where they
have been found.
"To some extent, the Chinese government understands the reasons they gave.
But as the country that is suffering, we hope the Japanese government can speed
up the process," he said.
The factory in Ning'an received poison-gas bombs in consignments of scrap
metal sold by local people and buried them alongside other chemical weapons that
were found on the grounds, according to Liu.
The bombs are to be moved to a newly built disposal facility in Harbaling, a
city in neighboring Jilin province, where some 30,000 other chemical weapons
already are stockpiled, Liu said.
In 2003, one person was killed and 43 others were injured when construction
workers broke open a buried barrel of abandoned poison gas in Qiqihar, a city in
northeast Heilongjiang province. It was the most serious incident in recent
years.
Qiqihar was a major center for Japan's military operations.
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