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French senator says will circulate questions on Skripal case among colleagues

France had expressed solidarity with the UK in the assessment of the incident in Salisbury, added Christian Combon

PARIS, April 6. /TASS/. The chairman of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs at the French Senate, Christian Combon is going to circulate among the members of French parliament the questions from the Russian Foreign Ministry regarding the case over the poisoning of the former Russian military intelligence officer and British spy, Sergei Skripal.

Senator Combon said it on Tuesday after a meeting with the chairman of the foreign policy committee in the upper house of Russian parliament, Konstantin Kosachov.

"We discussed all the problematic issues existing between our countries today, including the Skripal case," he said, adding that France had expressed solidarity with the UK in the assessment of the incident in Salisbury.

"The [UN] Security Council will discuss the problem on Thursday and it’s good that an agency of this high level will take it up because there’s much tension around the case," Combon said. "I want each member of parliament to build his or her own opinion on its merits."

"We don’t have any evidence," he said. "We just read media reports, the way you do."

Combon indicated the committee members were going to invite the French Foreign Minister for discussing the issue.

"As the head of the committee, I’d like to fill my colleagues in on the arguments circulated by the Russian Embassy," he said. "I’d like to let everyone formulate opinions of their own."

Combon also mentioned the expulsion of diplomats, saying the practice was typical for the situations of this kind. He voiced doubt, however, over the fruitfulness of such measures.

"As a result, the national diplomatic missions in Russia and in the West have been enfeebled," he said.

The Russian embassy in Paris sent a note containing a lift of questions in connection with the Skripal case to the French Foreign Ministry. Most of them concerned the grounds on which France had been invited to take part in the Salisbury incident investigation, the role the French experts were playing in it, and the grounds for drawing the conclusions on the Russian origin of the chemical agent used in the supposed Salisbury attack.