While giving a speech at the UN Disarmament and International Security Committee, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Lithuania to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Vaidotas Verba drew the attention diplomats to the increase in apprehensions over the environmental, health, security and economic impact of sea-dumped chemical weapons.

Chemical weapons were dumped at the Baltic Sea, the White Sea, the North Sea, the Tasman Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, however, the ecology of the self-contained and shallow Baltic Sea is the most vulnerable of all.

In 1992 the Helsinki Commission assessed that chemical weapons dumped at the Baltic Sea did not pose an acute threat, but they based such conclusion on an assumption that these weapons at the bottom of the sea would not be touched. Planning of the Nord Stream gas pipeline construction renewed the discussions on the issue of chemical weapons at regional and international levels.

Seeking for countries to cooperate on this issue, in October Lithuania held an international conference in Vilnius and invited representatives from the governments of countries all around the world that were interested in this issue. The most prominent experts on chemical weapons, members of academia, ecologists and representatives from other fields took part in the forum.

Together with other countries concerned, Lithuania will seek to deepen international and regional cooperation on this issue, the exchange of information, experience and technologies.

Lithuania aims at strengthening the capacities of the international community to react to the incidents that are related to chemical weapons and at preventing various threats, including terrorism. Lithuania will also seek to involve the experts from the UN and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons into this initiative.