BRUSSELS, March 27 (Xinhua) -- Britain has destroyed all the old chemical weapons it has declared to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the chemical weapons watchdog said Tuesday.

    OPCW Director-General Rogelio Pfirter attended a ceremony at the Imperial War Museum in London Tuesday, where British Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram announced the completion of destruction of all British stockpile of declared old chemical weapons, the OPCW said on its website.

    Speaking at the ceremony, Pfirter praised Britain for its strong and unwavering support for the global effort to ban chemical weapons, and commended the country for meeting its obligation to destroy its old chemical weapons.

    The OPCW, with its headquarters in The Hague, the Netherlands, is mandated to oversee the implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), which bans the development, production, stockpiling, transfer and use of chemical weapons.

    The CWC, which entered into force on April 29, 1997, requires signatory states to destroy all their chemical weapons by April 29,2012. It currently has 182 signatory countries, representing 98 percent of the global population.

    So far almost a quarter of the world's declared stockpile of approximately 71,000 metric tons of chemical agent have been verifiably destroyed.