A three-week effort to remove buried chemical and explosive
weapons abandoned by Japanese troops at the end of World War II
ended on Monday.
Most of the 2,000 devices found at the 13,400-square-meter site
in Ning’an, Heilongjiang
Province, were grenades, land mines and ordinary shells, Kyodo
News Service quoted Japan’s Abandoned Chemical Weapons Office as
saying.
So far, 67 have been confirmed as chemical weapons, and another
22 are suspected.
The retrieval process began early this month. A group of 32
Japanese experts were dispatched to Ning’an; China sent more than
100 experts to assist in the operation.
The Kyodo report indicates that the Japanese team originally
expected to find only about 700 weapons at the site.
Since the site is close to a residential community of about
1,400 people, strict safety precautions were taken to prevent
detonation of explosives or contamination from chemicals. The
weapons have been sealed and placed in a temporary storage facility
in Ning’an to be destroyed at a later date.
Chemical weapons are a long-standing issue between China and
Japan.
On July 30, 1999, China and Japan signed a memorandum to destroy
all chemical weapons left by Japan in China. In that agreement, the
Japanese government acknowledged that its troops had abandoned
chemical weapons in China and promised to carry out its obligations
under the Convention on the Banning of Chemical Weapons (CWC).
According to CWC, to which both China and Japan are signatory
states, all chemical weapons should be destroyed by 2007.
Bu Ping, a scholar from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
and a researcher on chemical weapons left by the Japanese,
estimates that Japanese troops abandoned over 2 million chemical
weapons in a dozen Chinese cities and provinces at the end of World
War II.
In June this year, 542 such weapons were dug up in Qiqihar,
Heilongjiang Province, by a joint team of Chinese and Japanese
experts.
(China Daily, China.org.cn September 28, 2004)