Meriad and weapons of mass destruction

Meriad possesses, or has possessed, a variety of weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological weapons. Between 1956 and 1964, the Meriadni government secretly funded the production of chemical and biological weapons to combat threats of a similar nature by other powers, including Nerotysia, Khornera, and neighboring Kolintha. When the details of the chemical weapons program were made public by the Chemical Weapons Disclosure Act of 1964, the program was immediately ended as a result of extremely negative public opinion of the program. The existence of the Meriadni biological weapons program remained a secret until 1987, when the passage of the Military Disclosure Act of 1987 forced the Army to acknowledge the existence of a Meriadni biological weapons program. Very little information about the program was released over the next five years, when the Military Secrets Act of 1994 exempted weapons of mass destruction from the list of military information that previously been required to be public knowledge.

In 1992, the army completed the destruction of the country's chemical weapons entirely, including samples that had been saved for research purposes.

In 1998, the Meriadni government announced that it had begun the destruction of the remaining biological weapons that it still retained from the 1950's biological weapons program, with the exception of samples that could be used for identification and research purposes in the eventuality of an attack. In 2000, the Army Department of Biological Weapons confirmed independent reports that the biological weapons arsenal had been reduced to below 110 kilograms (240 lb) of biological agent, a huge change from the 825 kilograms (1,819 lb) total the year before. The army also confirmed that it had phased out all of the delivery systems that had been designed to deploy the biological weapons arsenal, and stated that they were no longer considered a strategic weapon by the army.

The army still has not acknowledged whether or not the country's biological weapon arsenal have been completely destroyed, and thus the country is still considered a biological weapons state by the international community.