Soviets Put Chemical Arms on Display

MOSCOW —  Soviet authorities opened a military chemical weapons complex in the Volga area to military experts and diplomats from 45 nations Saturday to stress the Kremlin’s desire for a pact banning chemical arms.

Three representatives from each of the 40 nations, including the United States, represented in the chemical arms talks in Geneva, plus representatives from five observer countries, were shown 19 specimens of chemical weapons at the military facility at Shikhany in the lower Volga area, the official Tass news agency said.

The unprecedented visit to the military facility grew out of a Jan. 15, 1986, initiative by Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to attain a breakthrough in the chemical weapons talks that began in 1968.

“The Soviet Union,” Gorbachev said in the January statement, “considers as fully feasible the task of completely eliminating even in this century such barbaric weapons of mass destruction as chemical weapons.”

The invited guests were being shown the technology of the destruction of one of the 19 types of chemical weapons as part of a two-day visit to the complex, 90 miles north of Saratov, Tass said.

Maj. Gen. Robert Razuvanov, commander of the facility, said that “practically all types of chemical munitions” were being shown.

Of the 19 chemical weapons on display, 10 were for cannon-type and rocket artillery, two were chemical warheads for tactical missiles, six were samples of air bombs and sprinkling devices, and one was a chemical hand grenade.

A poster placed near each of the 19 samples gave its combat designation, caliber and the name of the toxic agent in the munition and the type of fuse and type of explosive, Tass reported.

Workers at the facility explained the nature of the toxic agent and answered questions.

“Now nobody will be able to say that in Shikhany we have shown our chemical weapons but have not told anything about them,” said Lt. Gen. Anatoly Kuntsevich, a weapons expert of the Defense Ministry.

Kuntsevich also said that while the Soviet Union was showing the chemical weapons “U.S. authorities ostentatiously adopted a decision of the beginning of the production of binary weapons.” Such weapons consist of two chemicals that are each harmless but lethal when combined.

He referred to the U.S. Senate’s refusal to delay the production of binary weapons and said he believed the decision would complicate the adoption of a convention on a complete chemical arms ban.

Georgy Legonov, a member of the Soviet delegation at the Geneva talks, called the weapons display at Shikhany “a concrete manifestation of the Soviet Union’s new approach to tackling international issues.”