THERE was all party support for a motion enabling Ireland to approve the Chemical Weapons Convention.

The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Ms Joan Burton, moving the motion, said that by their nature chemical weapons were among the most odious of the weapons of mass destruction. "They have no place in a civilised society.

Modern efforts to ban chemicals warfare went back more than 120 years to the Brussels Declaration of 1874 which prohibited the use of poisons and poisoned bullets in warfare.

"The great merit of the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention is that it provides for the elimination of this entire category of weapons." It was the result of 2,4 years of negotiations. To date, it had been signed by 160 countries.

A core element of the convention was that all chemical weapons and related production facilities had to be declared and eliminated under international supervision within 10 years of the entry into force of the convention.

The two principal possessors, the United States and the Russian Federation, were thought to have between them 70,000 tonnes of chemical weapons and up to 20 countries were believed to have some of the weapons. While their production was cheap the destruction of these weapons was expensive and environmentally challenging.

The Fianna Fail spokesman on foreign affairs, Mr Ray Burke, said massive stockpiles of "killing machines" existed as a result of the production of chemical weapons over decades.

Their destruction was an urgent requirement but it would not happen with the wave of a ratified convention.

"A ratified convention signals a will and a method to achieve the aim of ridding this earth of destructive weapons of war."