US has fully destroyed its stockpile of chemical weapons, Joe Biden says

‘I am proud to announce that the US has safely destroyed the final munition in that stockpile,’ the US president said on Friday

The United States was the last of the Chemical Weapons Convention’s signatories to complete the task of destroying their ‘declared’ stockpiles

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An operator cuts the metal bands on a pallet of M55 rockets containing the sarin nerve agent in July last year at the Blue Grass Army Depot near Richmond, Kentucky, US. Photo: US Army via AP

Published: 7:42am, 8 Jul 2023Updated: 7:56am, 8 Jul 2023

US President Joe Biden announced on Friday that the United States has fully destroyed its decades-old stockpiles of chemical weapons, fulfilling a commitment under the three-decade-old Chemical Weapons Convention.

“Today, I am proud to announce that the United States has safely destroyed the final munition in that stockpile – bringing us one step closer to a world free from the horrors of chemical weapons,” Biden said.

The United States was the last of the Chemical Weapons Convention’s signatories to complete the task of destroying their “declared” stockpiles, though some are believed to maintain secret reserves of chemical weapons.

“It marks the first time an international body has verified destruction of an entire category of declared weapons of mass destruction,” Biden said in a statement.

The announcement came after the Blue Grass Army Depot, a US Army facility in Kentucky, recently completed its four-year job of eliminating some 500 tonnes of lethal chemical agents, the last batch held by the US military.