UN General Assembly
1989

Today I want to announce steps that the United States is ready to take, steps to rid the world of these truly terrible weapons, steps towards a treaty that will ban - eliminate - all chemical weapons from the Earth 10 years from the day it is signed. This initiative contains three major elements. First, in the first eight years of a chemical weapons treaty the United States is ready to destroy nearly all - 98 per cent - of our chemical weapons stockpile, provided the Soviet Union joins the ban, and I think it will. Secondly, we are ready to destroy all of our chemical weapons - 100 per cent, every one - within 10 years, once all nations capable of building chemical weapons sign that total-ban treaty. And thirdly, the United States is ready to begin now. We will eliminate more than 80 per cent of our stockpile even as we work to complete a treaty, if the Soviet Union joins us in cutting chemical weapons to an equal level and if we agree on the conditions, including inspections, under which stockpiles are destroyed.