The organisation seeking to eliminate chemical weapons has said that North Korea and some key states in the Middle East are resisting efforts to destroy their chemical weapons arsenal.
But the head of the UN-affiliated Organisation for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Rogelio Pfirter was confident that six countries, including the US, Russia and India, would meet the deadline of destroying their chemical weapons by 2012.
Unless every country joins the OPCW, which currently has 180 member states, there will be a major loophole that could lead to the spread of the deadly weapons. Countries automatically become members of OPCW when they accede to the Chemical Weapons Convention that came into force in 1997.
Pfirter said there has been "enormous progress" recently in increasing membership, with several nations in Africa and the Caribbean also indicating they will joint sooner or later. "We cover 92 per cent of the surface of the earth and about 96 per cent of chemical industry, he said.
"This is all very positive. Yet we face significant challenges ahead. There remains a hardcore of some countries in which we don't see any real evidence of their moving towards accession," he added.
He expressed particular concern about North Korea, which has not responded to repeated attempts by the OPCW "to attract their attention and to encourage them to join."
In the Middle East, he said, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon and Syria "have one way or the other allocated the responsibility for the inability to join" to the ongoing regional conflict. "I disagree entirely with that. I believe today there is no moral or strategic or legal excuse to remain outside the chemical weapons ban," he added.