Probe into chemical weapons

2003-08-11 08:35

Beijing - Four Japanese officials have arrived in northeast China to investigate the discovery of Japanese chemical weapons left over from World War II that sickened some 36 people in Qiqihar city, Japanese officials said on Monday.

"We have sent a group of officials to Qiqihar to investigate the incident," a Japanese embassy official in Beijing said.

China Friday lodged a protest with Japan over injuries to construction workers in Qiqihar who discovered five drums of mustard gas last Monday that were allegedly buried by retreating Japanese armies nearly 60 years ago.

Workers removed the barrels and sold them for scrap that day, while one leaking barrel also contaminated the area around the dig.

By Monday evening several people reported headaches, eye problems and vomiting.

Of the 36 people suffering from exposure to the chemical, 29 were hospitalised and two were in grave condition with blood problems and difficulty breathing, the China Daily reported.

Doctors further warned that mustard gas also carried a latent effect that could last for months, it said.

The discovery coincided with the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Sino-Japanese Treaty of Peace and Friendship.

Japan's brutal occupation of Chinese territory before and during World War II remains a source of constant tensions between the countries with more than 700 000 chemical weapons estimated by Japan to have been abandoned by their retreating armies in the months around their surrender.

Chinese experts say that as many as two million such weapons are still buried, giving China the world's largest stockpile of leftover chemical weapons.

Tokyo agreed to fund and organise China's expected billion-dollar clean-up of the weapons when it joined negotiations on the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), one of the earliest international treaties aimed at ending the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

- AFP