Britain, Russia clash in UN over spy poisoning case
UNITED NATIONS, (MILLAT ONLINE)::In the latest sign of rising tensions between Britain and Russia over the poisoning of a former Russian spy, the two countries’ envoys clashed at a UN Security Council emergency meeting convened especially over the matter, Xinhua reported here on Thursday.
The exchange of barbs came shortly after British Prime Minister Theresa May announced that her government will expel 23 Russian diplomats, cancel high-level bilateral contacts with Russia, and freeze Russia state assets “wherever we have the evidence that they may be used to threaten the life or property of UK nationals or residents.”
“The Russian Federation thinks it is completely unacceptable to launch unjustified accusations as contained in the letter from Theresa May dated March 13 to the secretary-general of the United Nations,” Russia’s UN ambassador Vasily Nebenzya said.
“We demand that material proof be provided of the allegedly found Russian trace in this high-resonance event. Without this, stating that there is incontrovertible truth is not something that we can take into account,” he said.
The London-Moscow row started following the murder attempt on former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Britain’s southwestern city of Salisbury.
Found unconscious on a bench outside a shopping centre there on March 4, they remain in critical condition.
Britain claims the father-daughter pair was exposed to a nerve agent and Russia is responsible for the act, which Moscow denies.
At the UN Security Council meeting, Britain’s Deputy UN Ambassador Jonathan Allen said hundreds of his countrymen had potentially been exposed to the agent. He said Skripal, a 66-year-old former Russian spy who became a double agent for Britain, and his 33-year-old daughter were poisoned with novichok, a chemical nerve agent that cannot be manufactured without the use of the highest-grade state laboratories. “This was no common crime,” he said. “It was an unlawful use of force.”
At the same UN meeting, US Ambassador Nikki Haley said the Trump administration “stands in absolute solidarity” with Britain following the incident.
The United States believes that Russia “is responsible for the attack” on the two using a military-grade nerve agent, Haley added.
The White House issued a statement on the day in support of Britain, saying London’s decision to expel the Russian diplomats was justified.
“The United States stands in solidarity with its closest ally, the United Kingdom,” and is working together with its allies and partners to ensure that “this kind of abhorrent attack does not happen again,” the White House said.
It noted that the incident “fits into a pattern of behavior in which Russia disregards the international rules-based order, undermines the sovereignty and security of countries worldwide, and attempts to subvert and discredit Western democratic institutions and processes.”