ISLAMABAD, April 22: Pakistan said on Tuesday that the inspection of a fertilizer plant in Karachi by a UN team later this month was a “routine matter” and not a chemical weapons inspection.

Referring to news reports about Pakistan’s consent to “urgent UN inspections” for the prohibited chemical weapons, a statement by the foreign office spokesman said: “Contrary to the impression conveyed by certain news reports, this was not a chemical weapon inspection as Pakistan was not a chemical weapon state.”

The statement said the inspection of the fertilizer plant, which will take place on April 29, would last only one day.

More than 150 countries by virtue of their membership of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) had agreed to allow verification of their chemical industry, the spokesman said.

Maintaining that Pakistan fully subscribed to the objectives and purposes of the CWC, the spokesman said Pakistan would continue to work to strengthen it. Pointing to the achievement of the CWC, he said it had “enabled the international community to unveil India’s clandestine chemical weapons programme.

Bound by the procedures Pakistan could not go public with the information about the inspection that led to all sorts of speculations in the media circles on Tuesday.

The convention requires that the host governments, where the inspection is going to take place do not publicise the arrival of inspectors, sources close to the UN told Dawn.

According to the sources, under the procedure countries which need to be inspected are informed only 120 hours before the physical inspection.

To determine which 50 to 60 countries will go through the inspection annually member countries’ names are drawn through a computer ballot by the inspecting organization, which is the OPCW based in The Hague. This procedure was started in 1993.

Those chemical industries whose technology have a dual purpose and thus could be used for making chemical weapons qualify for this inspection. The industries, which fall in this category, include pesticides and fertilizer industries. Pakistan has approximately only nine such industries, officials said.

Nearly 1,400 such inspections of industrial units have been carried out so far. Most of the inspections have been conducted in the Western industrialized countries. However, this will be Pakistan’s first.

In the meanwhile, India has gone through over 100 OPCW inspections. The Indian case is interesting because it signed CWC in January 1993 as a non-chemical weapons country. However, one month after ratifying the CWC in 1996 it announced that it was in possession of 1,000 to 2,000 tons of chemical weapons. Significantly, earlier in August 1992 the Indian foreign secretary, Mr J.N. Dixit, had signed with his Pakistani counterpart Sheharyar Khan a bilateral declaration prohibiting development, production or acquisition of chemical weapons.

In response to the Indian disclosure, the OPCW authorities sealed its weapons. Under the supervision of OPCW the destruction of the Indian chemical weapons will be completed by 2007.