'Chemical Weapons Convention unique test case.'

UN Chronicle, Fall, 1997 by Dafna Holtzer

The Convention works!

There are only a few countries in the world that actually have chemical weapons. "Until the Convention came into force there were two declared possessors, Russia and the United States. Thanks to the existence of the Convention, some other countries--one in fact has already made an official statement on this subject--may come out into the open when submitting their declarations. All in all, it proves that the Convention works! Countries do feel confident enough to come public and declare that they have chemical weapons and they are prepared to destroy them. It proves that the Convention is effective and it also proves that the mechanism of confidence-building does work. We have reasons to be very hopeful that this could be a very successful exercise. The Americans are already in the process of destroying their installations. We have inspectors going to the United States and we are already carrying out a number of investigations in other countries in different parts of the world. We can say that we are producing results already despite only being in existence for three months," the Director-General concluded.