Biden: I don’t think there is a consensus in NATO regarding Ukraine’s membership

US President Joe Biden said he doesn’t believe there is a consensus in NATO regarding granting Ukraine membership in the military alliance at the present time in light of the Russian invasion.

“I don’t think there is a consensus in NATO about whether Ukraine will be included in the alliance family now or not, right now, in the midst of the war,” he said in an interview with CNN.

Biden also announced on Friday that the United States had destroyed its last stockpiles of chemical weapons, completing a process that began in 1997 when it signed the global convention banning these deadly weapons.

“For more than 30 years, the United States has worked tirelessly to eliminate its stockpiles of chemical weapons,” Biden said in a statement… Today I am proud to announce that the United States has safely destroyed the last ammunition in this stockpile, bringing us a step closer to a world free of the horrors of chemical weapons”.

Other signatories to the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention had already destroyed their reserves, OPCW Director General Fernando Arias announced in May.

Arias said that only the United States should finish destroying its reserves, noting that more than “70,000 tons of the most dangerous poisons in the world” destroyed under the supervision of his organization.

In his statement, Biden encouraged the rest of the world to sign the 1997 agreement in order for the global ban on chemical weapons to reach its full scope.

“Russia and Syria must recomply with the agreement and acknowledge their undeclared programs that have been used to commit egregious atrocities and attacks,” the US president said.

Before the White House announcement, Republican Senator Mitch McConnell said Friday that the Blue Grass military site located in the state of Kentucky had recently finished destroying about 500 tons of lethal chemicals after a four-year mission.

Those materials represented the last precautions that the US armed forces possessed.

“Although the use of these deadly weapons will remain an indelible stain on history, our nation has finally made good on its promise to rid itself of this scourge,” McConnell said in a statement.

“Chemicals are responsible for some of the most horrific stages in terms of human losses,” he added.