FROM EIR DAILY ALERT

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Russia Will Put Forward a ‘Good Initiative’ at April 4 OPCW Session on Skripal Case

, 2018—On April 4 Russia will present an initiative at an extraordinary session of the Executive Council of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in the Skripal case, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the OPCW Alexander Shulgin said on April 1. The session will take place behind closed doors, and will not be open to the media.

“We plan to come out with one more initiative at the extraordinary session,” he said in an interview with the Russian government daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta, reports TASS.

“I’d prefer not to disclose it now but, you can take it from me that it will be a good initiative, which will give rise to no unfavorable criticism. It fits perfectly well into the framework of the Chemical Weapons Convention and is geared to resolve the problem by civilized means.”

He continued, however, that the OPCW experts were unlikely to provide results of their probe in time for the April 4 meeting. “It was reported that they will need two or three weeks after the samples are collected, packed and taken to laboratories for analysis.

“We expect the experts to give an official, purely fact-based conclusion on the chemical composition of the samples collected by the technical secretariat specialists with due observance of the procedure of evidence collecting and ensuring their safety. The mission’s mandate does not envisage identifying those responsible,”

he stressed.