OSCE security forum urges destruction of thousands of tonnes of dangerous ammunition and weapons

VIENNA, 29 September 2004 - The OSCE's Forum for Security Co-operation (FSC) held a special meeting today on the risks posed by poorly-guarded stockpiles of deteriorating surplus conventional weapons and munitions, left over from the Cold War era.

"The precise scope of the problem is unclear", said Ambassador H. Werner Ehrlich, the Austrian Chair of the FSC. "But the dimensions are staggering. Ukraine alone has identified 120,000 tonnes of obsolete and dangerous ammunition on its territory overdue for destruction."

Some of the depots lie within populated areas or close to important infrastructure such as utilities, including nuclear power stations. A violent reminder of this danger came a few months ago when at least 14 people were killed or injured near the southern Ukrainian town of Melitopol, after over 4,000 carriages of bombs and ammunition stored at a crumbling former Soviet Army depot exploded without warning.

Thousands of terrified people were evacuated and the damage was put at several hundred millions euros. Such an amount, Ambassador Ehrlich pointed out, was far higher than the estimated cost of making such a stockpile safe.

"These stockpiles are really ticking time-bombs and no-one knows the amount of time we have left. Many states just do not have the national capacity to secure or destroy these vast stores. So we must act urgently. It will not be cheap to support projects that can deal with these stockpiles, but it will be one of the best investments in security we can make against terrorism and environmental risks."

Such lethal and unstable relics are lurking in dozens of sites across Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, as well as the Caucasus and Central Asia. They pose a multiple danger, not only to the immediate neighbourhood from the risk of explosion. Decomposing explosives also allow highly toxic chemicals to seep into groundwater, threatening an entire region. Even more horrifying is the potential use that terrorist groups could make of the often ill-guarded weapons.

Today's meeting gave the FSC the opportunity to take stock of the requests for assistance - so far tabled by Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and Tajikistan - on the basis of the OSCE Document on Stockpiles endorsed by Foreign Ministers of the 55 participating States at their annual meeting in December 2003. The FSC meeting also assessed the available technologies and the management capacities required to tackle such huge quantities of dangerous munitions, missiles and explosives.

Ambassador Ehrlich called this development a "quantum leap" in the work of the FSC. "We have a central role in the OSCE as a forum for security dialogue, for setting consensually based, politically binding norms and confidence-building measures and for monitoring their implementation. But until now the FSC has had little experience with the management of huge projects on the ground."

He said the results of this meeting would allow the FSC to assess the size of the problem, its urgency and the priorities to be addressed as well as to gauge the interest of potential donor countries and the possibilities of co-operating with other international bodies.

"Progress in implementing those huge and costly projects will largely depend on the voluntary assistance given by the participating States, as well as by other international bodies and NGOs. It will also be helped by raising public awareness about the life threatening nature of such stockpiles" the FSC Chairman added.

Follow-up initiatives by the Austrian FSC Chairmanship, which runs until the end of this year, may include assessment visits and the development of individual projects.