GORNY, Russia -- Burdened with 40,000 tons of deadly Soviet- era chemical weapons, Russia this week proudly unveiled its first purpose-built plant for their gradual disposal.

Built since 1993 using a 40-million-euro grant from the German government, the facility at Gorny, situated about 1000 kilometres southeast of Moscow, will start its first trials in the coming weeks.

"Its completion shows the will of many countries to help free U.S. from the misery of chemical weapons," the Director of Russia's Munitions Agency, Zinovy Pak, said as the military admitted foreign journalists to the site in the remote steppe by Kazakhstan.

With Gorny due to treat just 1,200 tons of lewisite irritant gas and mustard gas -- or less than three per cent of the total arsenal -- by 2005, the destruction of Russia's stocks of the armaments is a daunting task.

Yet Moscow is committed to it under a 1997 international agreement, and estimates the work will cost around eight billion dollars, DPA reported.

"We want to finish by 2012 as agreed," Pak said, although talks are already underway with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague for deadline extension.

Meanwhile, public awareness of the deadly inheritance is growing, in itself a major departure from old Soviet traditions of ignorance and disinformation about the threat in the country's own backyard.

"Either we destroy chemical weapons or they destroy us," reads graffiti painted on a perimeter wall at Gorny by a group of ecology students invited this summer to help build parts of the plant.

The Russian military has stored chemical weapons here since the arms race against the United States escalated in the 1950s. Most is still kept in aging tanks and cisterns on the sprawling grounds by the new plant.

"No one knows exactly in what state these substances are now in," said Horst Minning, construction director for the German Defense Ministry's procurement and logistics wing. He is charged with ensuring donated funds are used by the Russian partners as agreed.

At first glance Gorny looks like an ordinary chemical plant, a sprawling mass of storage containers, pipelines, filter systems, counters and dials.

But the double rows of barbed wired, watch towers and two armored cars parked by the gate indicate the particular hazards within "Object 1280-Opo", as it is officially classified.

Inside, dozens of technicians bustle in modern surroundings, some of whom wear camouflage uniforms beneath their white overalls and lab coats.

"Most of our specialists are civilians," said Professor Vyacheslav Mukhidov, designer of the Robot system used for extracting samples of the gases to avoid any direct human exposure, one of a number of innovations installed in the premises.

The substances will be deactivated by a hydrolysis procedure developed by Russian scientists, breaking them down through chemical reaction with water and then enabling them to be decomposed further.

"We did all this to ensure that people feel safe both in and around the plant," Pak said.

The civilian authorities in the regional center of Saratov are nonetheless alarmed at the waste that will be produced at the plant, mainly large quantities of arsenic yielded by the disposal process.

Despite its conventional applications in industry, this residue is also potentially lethal.

To temper the concerns, a new hospital, schools, play schools and apartments are being built for the local community.

Its a modest start. Gorny is by far the smallest of the seven chemical weapons storage depots located across the country.

Hardest to treat will be the 32,000 tons of nerve agents Sarin and Soman which are stored at five of these sites.

These will eventually be taken to the settlement of Shchuche in the southern Urals, which along with Kambarka in northern Russia will see the construction of large disposal plants with help from the United States and the European Union.

Russia hopes that a good proportion of the 20 billion U.S. dollars allocated this year by the G-8 for disarmament will be released for work on chemical weapons as well as for nuclear security purposes.

As well as the separate German aid, accords have also been signed with Italy and Britain to help dispose of Russian weapons, which clearly pose a common threat in the wrong hands.

France, Norway and the Netherlands are also interested in helping, Mikhail Margelov, the head of the Russian Federation Council's Committee for International Affairs, told ITAR-TASS news agency.