Japan to restart disposal of wartime chemical weapons in Jilin
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2006-08-18 17:23
TOKYO -- The Japanese Cabinet said Friday it will begin collecting and
disposing of abandoned wartime chemical weapons in Dunhua, of China's Jilin
Province, next week, with support from the Chinese government.
The project, which will run from August 22 till September 26, is the third in
Dunhua. During the first and second time in October to November, 2005 and in
May-June, 2006 respectively, a total of 605 shells of chemical weapons have been
collected from Dunhua.
Chinese official statistics show that Japan abandoned at least 2 million tons
of chemical weapons at about 40 sites in 15 Chinese provinces at the end of
World War II, most of them in the three northeast provinces of Heilongjiang,
Jilin and Liaoning.
In the past nine years, China and Japan have worked together to investigate,
excavate, retrieve and pack the dumped weapons. So far 37,499 chemical weapons
and 200 tons of contaminated items have been collected, but none have been
destroyed.
More than 2,000 Chinese have fallen victim to Japan's abandoned chemical
weapons, killed by leading toxic gas while working at construction sites or on
other occasions, according to China's Foreign Ministry.
China and Japan joined the United Nations Chemical Weapons Convention in
1997. Two years later, they signed a memorandum, in which Japan admitted that it
had abandoned a large amount of chemical weapons in China at the end of World
War II.
Under the memorandum, Japan is obliged to remove the weapons by April 2007
and provide all necessary funds, equipment and personnel for their retrieval and
destruction.
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