A top British official on Wednesday rejected the idea of joining forces with Russia to investigate how a former Russian spy was poisoned in England, after British Prime Minister Theresa May openly accused Russia of being behind the plot.
“There is no requirement in the Chemical Weapons Convention for a victim to engage the likely perpetrator in a joint investigation,” John Foggo, the United Kingdom’s acting ambassador to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, said Wednesday. “To do so would be perverse.”
Russian officials proposed a joint probe after calling an emergency meeting of the OPCW to discuss the attempted assassination of former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal. Russia has denied responsibility, but Western countries expelled more than 150 Russian diplomats and intelligence operatives in an endorsement of May’s accusation.
“We will not agree to Russia’s demand to conduct a joint investigation into the attack in Salisbury because the UK – supported by many other countries – has assessed that it is highly likely that the Russian State is responsible for this attack, and that there is no plausible alternative explanation,” Foggo said.
Russian officials have suggested that the United Kingdom staged the attack, either for domestic political purposes or to damage ties between Russia and other western European powers.
“[I]t is impossible to trust London, given its continuous misconduct and the unacceptable rhetoric against Russia,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told TASS, a state-run media outlet. “Only thorough examination of all facts and circumstances with our representatives taking part will ensure truly unbiased probe into truth. This is the gist of our proposal, no more, no less.”
The OPCW is conducting its own analysis of Skripal’s poisoning, which British officials say involved the use of “a military-grade nerve agent” developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. OPCW Director-General Ahmet Üzümcü outlined the status of the probe during Wednesday’s meeting, emphasizing that their experts collected their own samples from the scene of the attack.
“The results of the sample analyses are expected to be received by early next week,” said Üzümcü, a Turkish diplomat. “The OPCW team worked independently and is not involved in the national investigation by the UK authorities.”
The OPCW rejected the idea of a joint investigation, prompting Russia to request a Thursday meeting of the United Nations Security Council. “We submitted a weighed-out proposal but it didn’t invoke understanding on the part of Western countries who sank so low as to hurl libellous rebukes and concoctions at Russia,” Ambassador Alexander Shulgin, who represents Russia at the OPCW, said Wednesday. “We had to respond to them in a tough way.”
Foggo, Shulgin’s British counterpart, observed that Russia had scheduled the Wednesday meeting on the first anniversary of a chemical weapons attack in Syria that the U.S. and other Western nations blamed on Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime. Russia, which backs Assad, likewise suggested that the 2017 attack was staged in order to justify hostility to Assad.
“It seems clear that Russia will never accept the legitimacy of any investigation into chemical weapons use unless it comes up with an answer Russia likes,” Foggo said.
