Japan will dispose of leftover World War II chemical weapons buried in Dunhua, northeast China's Jilin Province, from next Wednesday through to November 23 in cooperation with the Chinese government, according to a Xinhua News Agency report today.

Japanese government officials said Friday that Takeshi Erikawa, the Cabinet Office vice minister, will visit China for five days from Tuesday to discuss progress in the disposal of weapons abandoned by the Japanese army.

Erikawa will also visit the sites where Japan is planning to build two chemical weapons-disposal facilities in Jilin.

Japan estimates its forces abandoned more than 700,000 chemical weapons in China during the war, although Chinese authorities say there are as many as 2 million and that over 2,000 people have been harmed by them.

According to Xinhua, some 90 percent of abandoned chemical weapons, including mustard gas, a highly poisonous blistering agent, are buried in Jilin and experts fear the local soil may have been polluted.

The Chemical Weapons Convention was signed in 1993 and came into force in 1997 after being ratified by 50 countries including China and Japan. All parties have until 2007 to destroy chemical weapons stockpiles and facilities, including those abandoned in foreign countries.

In 1999, Japan committed itself to provide funding, technology, human resources and other assets needed to scrap the weapons.

Until 2005, more than 40,000 buried or discarded Japanese chemical weapons had successfully been retrieved by Chinese authorities, according to the Headquarters of the General Staff of the People's Liberation Army.

(Xinhua News Agency, China.org.cn October 8, 2005)