Japan will dispose of leftover World War II chemical weapons
buried in Dunhua, northeast China's Jilin
Province, from next Wednesday through to November 23 in
cooperation with the Chinese government, according to a Xinhua News
Agency report today.
Japanese government officials said Friday that Takeshi Erikawa,
the Cabinet Office vice minister, will visit China for five days
from Tuesday to discuss progress in the disposal of weapons
abandoned by the Japanese army.
Erikawa will also visit the sites where Japan is planning to
build two chemical weapons-disposal facilities in Jilin.
Japan estimates its forces abandoned more than 700,000 chemical
weapons in China during the war, although Chinese authorities say
there are as many as?2 million and that over 2,000 people have
been harmed by them.
According to Xinhua, some 90 percent of abandoned chemical
weapons, including mustard gas, a highly poisonous blistering
agent, are buried in Jilin and experts fear the local soil may have
been polluted.
The Chemical Weapons Convention was signed in 1993 and came into
force in 1997 after being ratified by 50 countries including China
and Japan. All parties have until 2007 to destroy chemical weapons
stockpiles and facilities, including those abandoned in foreign
countries.
In 1999, Japan committed itself?to provide funding,
technology, human resources and other assets needed to scrap the
weapons.
Until 2005, more than 40,000 buried or discarded Japanese
chemical weapons had successfully been retrieved by Chinese
authorities, according to the Headquarters of the General Staff of
the People's Liberation Army.
(Xinhua News Agency, China.org.cn October 8, 2005)