Director General Visits Finland

Director-General Ahmet Uzumcu visited Helsinki on 7 and 8 December 2011 where he met the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Erkki Tuomioja, and the Minister for International Development, Ms Heidi Hautala. His programme also included a meeting with Mr Jaakko Laajava, Under-Secretary of State for the Foreign Ministry, who has been appointed facilitator for the 2012 conference to establish a WMD-free zone in the Middle East. 

In their meetings Director-General Uzumcu discussed the WMD-free zone conference and the contribution of the OPCW to the process. He thanked Finland for its generous support for the OPCW’s activities and reviewed the decisions taken at the recent 16th Session of the Conference of the States Parties, including on the destruction of chemical weapons stockpiles and tenure policy.

While in Helsinki the Director-General delivered the opening address [PDF – 36 KB] to the Third International Workshop on Chemical Warfare Agents at VERIFIN*, in which he highlighted the Institute’s excellent cooperation with the OPCW. He noted that VERIFIN was among the first OPCW designated laboratories, and commended the high quality training that it offers to chemists from OPCW States Parties for the purpose of implementing the Chemical Weapons Convention.

The Director-General also called upon the European Chemicals Agency to discuss possible future collaboration.

* Finnish Institute for Verification of the Chemical Weapons Convention