By RIA Novosti,
Moscow : Britain is to provide 10 mln pounds ($19.8 mln) a year for the physical protection of nuclear installations in the CIS, the director of the Global Threat Reduction Program said on Tuesday.
The CIS, or the Commonwealth of Independent States, is an organization made up of eleven former Soviet states, including Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.
Alan Hayes said the U.K. had pledged to disburse a total of 750 million pounds ($1.4 billion) under the program and has already spent more than half that amount.
The money is used to assist in the process of making spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste safe and secure at Russia’s Andreyev Bay (Kola Peninsula) and at the Atomflot port near Murmansk, as well as defueling and dismantling decommissioned nuclear submarines.
Hayes added that the experience that the U.K. has accumulated in dismantling decommissioned nuclear submarines in Russia could also be used in dismantling its own nuclear submarines.
An official from Russia’s Federal Industry Agency said Moscow intends to spend $1.4 billion in 2008 on the destruction of its chemical weapon stockpiles.
Yelena Radushkina said that last year Russia spent $1.5 billion on the destruction of chemical weapons, while the national chemical weapons destruction program was worth a total of $9 billion.
She added that Russia fulfills in good faith its international obligations, pointing out that “as of April 18, 10,000 tons of all chemical weapons stockpiles had been destroyed, or 27% of the total.”