POCHEP, Russia — Russia has inaugurated a plant designed to destroy the country's largest stockpile of chemical weapons.
The facility at Pochep in western Russia will tackle one of the deadliest legacies of the Cold War. The country still possesses the world's largest amount of weapons of mass destruction.
As a signatory of the international Chemical Weapons Convention, Russia already has destroyed about half of its chemical weapons, according to Russian officials. It is now facing the final deadline in 2012 to destroy all of its chemical weapons.
Pochep is home to a stockpile of 7,500 tons of nerve agent, or nearly 19 percent of the chemical weapons Russia is committed to destroy.