South Sudan is to join the Chemical Weapons Convention outlawing the use of such toxic arms, leaving only three nations not signed up to the treaty, a global watchdog said Friday.

"South Sudan has no reason to sit on the fence," top foreign ministry official Moses Akol Ajawin told the annual meeting of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), adding his country has almost concluded the process to become the body's "newest and youngest state party".

That leaves just Israel, Egypt and North Korea as the only countries yet to join the arms treaty which came into force in 1997.

source: AFP