A joint team from Japan and China yesterday started work excavating and destroying a batch of chemical weapons in Ning'an, Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, which were left by Japanese forces during their invasion of China in World War II.

Experts are using metal detectors to locate more than 100 bombs near the No 1 Middle School in Ning'an.

In 2004 cannon shells were discovered in the area, some of which contained toxic chemicals.

The local government appealed to the Japanese Government to dispose of them quickly and find any other objects that could cause damage to nearby residential areas.

Liu Yiren, director of the Office of Japanese Abandoned Chemical Weapons in China affiliated to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said the chemical weapons were a serious danger.

"Abandoned chemical weapons have been affecting the development of towns and cities where they are buried and threatening people's lives," Liu told reporters.

In Ning'an, he said: "the local government has been presenting this issue repeatedly to the foreign ministry."

The Japanese side is in charge of funding, technology, expertise and equipment while the Chinese side will provide necessary assistance, Liu said.

A temporary holding site surrounded by a 1.5-metre-high concrete wall lined with sandbags, apparently to contain any explosions was set up nearby for handling the bombs.

Officials said they hoped to have the weapons in Ning'an excavated by next week and moved to a secure site in preparation for destruction.

The bombs are to be moved to a newly built disposal facility in Harbaling, a city in Jilin Province, where some 30,000 other chemical weapons have already been stockpiled, Liu said.

The issue of chemical weapons like the ones in Ning'an has remained one of the major problems between China and Japan.

In one case in August 2003, a man was killed and 43 others injured when five canisters of mustard gas were disturbed at a construction site in Qiqihar, Heilongjiang Province.

The two countries have signed a memorandum on the destruction of chemical weapons abandoned by Japan in China, in which the two sides reached consensus to finish the destruction work by 2007.

"But regrettably, the substantive destruction of weapons in China has not started yet," said Liu,

"We're not satisfied with the speed of processing abandoned chemical weapons by the Japanese side."

The country had agreed to the request by Japan for extending the destruction deadline to 2012, Liu said.

Source: China Daily