Russia will open a new facility on Tuesday to continue destroying its formidable arsenal of chemical weapons, the world's biggest, as part of its drive to eliminate all such weapons by 2012.
Located near Leonidovka in the central Penza region, around 550 km (350 miles) southeast of Moscow, it is the sixth of seven such facilities Russia plans to build.
Russia and its Cold War-era foe the United States held more than 71,000 metric tonnes of deadly chemical agents in 1997, more than 90 percent of the world's chemical weapons stockpiles. Russia's arsenal alone stood at 40,000 tonnes.
Under the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, Moscow and Washington committed themselves to completely destroy all their stockpiles of chemical weapons by 2012.
The new Leonidovka facility holds 6,885 metric tonnes of VX, sarin and soman nerve agents, about 17 percent of Russia's declared chemical weapons stockpile.
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