ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Iraqi government has welcomed official certification that it has destroyed its chemical weapons, though officials from Halabja fear that some remnants remain. The Iraqi Government “welcomes the announcement by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) certifying that Iraq has destroyed all of its chemical weapons remnants, and fulfilled all its obligations deriving from the Chemical Weapons Convention,” it announced in a tweet Thursday evening. Iraq “is committed to the provisions of the Chemical Weapons Convention, and its underlying vision of a world free of chemical weapons and of the threat of their use,” it added. The Director General of the OPCW, Ahmet Uzumcu, congratulated Iraq in The Hague earlier this week, describing it as a “notable achievement.” He presented Iraqi Minister of Higher Education Abdulrazzaq al-Jaleel Essa with a certificate recognizing the complete destruction of Iraq’s chemical weapons remnants. The OPCW confirmed the destruction of four former chemical weapons production facilities in Iraq. One former site was approved for conversion for other purposes and will be subject to regular inspections for another ten years. Iraq had also declared chemical weapons remnants stored in two bunkers in al-Muthana, which it began destroying in 2017. The head of Halabja’s Chemical Weapons Victims Society expressed doubt that all the country’s chemical weapons have been destroyed. “We do not think this news is true and believe there are still chemical weapons existing in some places as per our information,” Luqman Abdulqadir told Rudaw English. Hikmat Fayaq, a member of the high board of the Halabja Victims Society, agreed that Iraqi still has some chemical weapons, hidden in Muthana province. “These weapons were buried and covered with concrete by the Iraqi Baathist regime,” and the current government has not destroyed them, he told Rudaw English. If these “weapons are not exterminated, they will pose a serious threat to the environment” if they dissipate over time, he said. Fayaq also expressed concern that ISIS had obtained chemical weapons. Tomorrow, March 16, marks the 30th anniversary of the Halabja chemical weapon attack. An estimated 5,000 people were killed and another 10,000 injured when the Iraqi regime dropped deadly gas on the Kurdish city. It is the largest chemical attack against a civilian population in history. Iraq signed onto the Chemical Weapons Convention in 2009. The Convention aims to entirely eliminate the weapons of mass destruction. The OPCW received the Nobel Peace Prize for its work in 2013.
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