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International organizations undergoing durability test over Skripal case - diplomat

The OPCW published on Thursday a report on the results of its investigation into the Salisbury incident

MOSCOW, April 15. /TASS/. International organizations are undergoing a colossal durability test over the situation in Syria and the Salisbury incident, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Sunday.

According to the Russian diplomat, "explicit manipulation of data can be seen inside international organizations" on both the so-called Skripal case and the situation in Syria.

"It is a colossal blow on the United Nations Security Council, the OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons), and so forth. These instruments that made it possible for various countries to cooperate as equals are now undergoing a colossal durability test," she said in an interview with the Voskresny Vecher s Vladimirom Solovyovym (Sunday Evening with Vladimir Solovyov) program on the Rossiya-1 television channel.

According to Zakharova, it is a task for diplomats to pursue their countries’ policy and defend their interests, including within international organizations, but it is inadmissible "to indulge in fraud that can be fraught with a threat to human lives."

"And the material we have (the OPCW report - TASS) indicated, first of all, that this is a global-scale fraud," she stressed.

The OPCW published on Thursday a report on the results of its investigation into the Salisbury incident. The document confirms that the former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter were exposed to a nerve agent but it says that OPCW experts failed to establish it origin.

On March 4, former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal, 66, who had been earlier sentenced in Russia for spying for the UK, and his daughter Yulia, 33, were found unconscious on a bench near the Maltings shopping center in Salisbury, UK. Police said they had been exposed to a nerve agent.

Later, London claimed that the toxin of Novichok-class had been allegedly developed in Russia. With that, the UK rushed to accuse Russia of being involved, while failing to produce any evidence. Moscow refuted the accusations that it had participated in the incident and points out that neither the Soviet Union nor Russia have ever done research into that toxic chemical.

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