Assad now appears prepared to give up his chemical weapons in exchange for remaining in power.

The Chinese can t force Kim to disarm fully, but they can persuade him to negotiate with a now more flexible US.

By spending just 8 of this amount, the Russian army could match its expensive new weapons with soldiers who are able and willing to handle them well.

The United States is the key country engaged in proliferation and should announce dismantlement of all its nuclear weapons within its borders and abroad, once and for all, before saying anything about non proliferation.

The Maoists enter the government still with their own army confined to cantonments, with their weapons stored under UN monitoring and a Young Communist League that has persistently acted outside the law.

Officially, the treaty cuts their weapons by one third in fact, each party will decommission only several dozen.

From the adoption of resolution 687 (1991) until the commencement of biological inspections, Iraq had time to eliminate much of the evidence of past activities at facilities used in its biological weapons programme.

The programme, which was the last started among Iraq's efforts in the field of weapons of mass destruction, materialized after Iraq had already developed and deployed its chemical weapons and progressed in the modification of foreign missile systems.

The first country in the world to renounce voluntarily the possession of its operational nuclear weapons, Belarus continues to be a committed albeit somewhat lonely  proponent of the idea of a nuclear arms free space in Eastern and Central Europe.