THE HAGUE, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) -- Director General of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) Fernando Arias on Tuesday urged member states to financially support its plan to upgrade current Laboratory and Equipment Store through the construction of a new Centre for Chemistry and Technology.
"I would like to have contributions from all countries, even with just small amounts, so that they all have a sense of appropriation and a feeling of ownership," Arias told reporters in the Hague five days ahead of a session of the Conference of the States Parties.
"We have to adapt to new risks and challenges. Capacity, knowledge, skills, experience and high professional quality are crucial in the organization," he said.
The project to build a ChemTech Centre seeks to strengthen the OPCW's science and technology capabilities to fully address the real threat of chemical weapons, as well as to support capacity building in member states.
In November last year, the organisation published a Needs statement for this upgrading, noting that he current OPCW Laboratory, which has been in the same facility in Rijswijk in the Netherlands for well over 20 years, is in need of an investment that matches both its current uses and future ambitions.
Arias explained that the OPCW current laboratory facility will be obsolete in one or two years and needs to be replaced, while the new 26-million-euro centre will include "a sophisticated top lab" running chemical samples analyses, and a centre of research and investigation into dangerous chemicals, but also future green chemicals.
Arias told reporters that funds already contributed stand at 10 million euros (one euro currently equals to 1.13 U.S. dollars), while the centre will be constructed in the Dutch village of Pijnacker-Nootdorp, near the Hague, where OPCW is based.
As the implementing body for the Chemical Weapons Convention, the OPCW oversees the global endeavour to permanently and verifiably eliminate chemical weapons. At present 96.5 percent of all chemical weapon stockpiles declared have been destroyed under OPCW verification.
"The risks have not being eradicated," said Arias, adding "The organization is not only meant for destruction and non reemergence of chemical weapons, but also of protecting civil society of dangerous chemicals."
