MOSCOW, 17 March (BelTA) - The Russian Foreign Ministry demand that the United States and Ukraine provide the international community with all information about biological laboratories located on the Ukrainian territory, official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova said at a briefing for the press in Moscow on 17 March, BelTA has learned.
"We demand that Kiev and Washington provide all information on military-biological activity in laboratories on the territory of Ukraine, take all necessary steps to settle this issue," Maria Zakharova said.
According to her, in the absence of the reaction from them, Russia does not rule out invoking the mechanisms of Articles 5 and 6 of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons. "If there's nothing wrong there, then there's nothing wrong. But you get the feeling that somethings is wrong because of stonewalling, unwillingness to talk on this subject in international organizations, concealment of facts, destruction of evidence and nervous reaction,” Maria Zakharova noted.
"As for the US insinuations that Russia has been allegedly developing biowarfare programs for a long time, they can only be considered as an attempt to divert the attention of the international community from its own unseemly steps in this sensitive area, including beyond national borders in circumvention of the convention," Maria Zakharova added.
