Political Quotes

“In summary, this amendment establishes five conditions for the assistance that is to be provided to Russia for destruction of its chemical weapons, the so-called Nunn-Lugar funding. Very briefly, this resolution is called for because the funding that we have provided to Russia to date does not appear to be adequately supported by the Government of Russia for its part of its own chemical weapons destruction program. If one could view this in the nature of matching funds, I think it is easy to understand. We have provided a great deal of money, of Nunn-Lugar funding, to Russia, much of it for destruction of their chemical weapons. They have not reciprocated by allocating or spending any of their own money for the destruction of their chemical weapons. In addition, they have not ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention. They have not complied with the terms of the so-called Wyoming Memoranda, which is one of the methods by which we exchange information about our chemical stocks in furtherance of an agreement to destroy them. They have backed out of the bilateral destruction agreement, which was our bilateral agreement to destroy our mutual stocks of chemical weapons. They have not advanced a penny toward the development of the facilities for the destruction of their weapons that are currently being designed with U.S. Government money.”