The eight-day clean-up was carried out in a village near Qiqihar city in northeastern Heilongjiang province, where Japan had a logistics base during its invasion of China, Xinhua News Agency said.

Japan has estimated that its forces abandoned more than 700,000 chemical weapons in China after the war, although Chinese experts say as many as 2 million such weapons exist.

Some 600,000 bombs have been collected and stored in Jilin province, awaiting the construction of a bomb incinerator to destroy them. Japan has for years accused China of foot-dragging in the construction of the incinerator.

Under the U.N. Chemical Weapons Convention, one of the earliest international treaties aimed at ending the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, Japan has until 2007 to destroy the bombs. But experts say it will take much longer to safely dispose of so much ordnance.

Last year Japan committed ¥21.1 billion to clean up the weapons from a budget during the past five years that has totaled some ¥60 billion.

The Japan Times Weekly: July 3, 2004
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