HAGUE, November 29. /TASS/. Russia believes that the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has worsened its performance, according to Oleg Ryazantsev, the head of the Russian delegation at the group’s conference opening on Monday.
‘’Centrifugal tendencies are growing, the practice of consensus-based decision-making has been lost and the environment is extremely politicized,’’ Ryazantsev, who is also Russia’s deputy minister of industry and trade, said in a statement on the OPCW website.
The reason is the desire of a ‘’small group of states’’ to substitute international law with ‘’their own invented rules,’’ he said.
He referred to the 2018 decision to assign to the Technical Secretariat prosecutorial functions of determining those responsible for the use of chemical weapons and the creation of the ‘’illegitimate’’ Investigation and Identification Team, which accused Syria of deploying chemical weapons.
‘’Our organization has also been destabilized by the campaign led by a small group of countries and launched after the alleged poisoning of A. Navalny in August 2020,’’ Ryazantsev said. ‘’Russia is required to investigate the incident in cooperation with the OPCW Technical Secretariat.’’
‘’It is the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Sweden that we see at the forefront of the so-called concerned states,’’ he went on to say. ‘’Yet, it is these countries that have been doing their utmost so that the truth is never revealed.’’
Ryazantsev stated that, ‘’contrary to the promises made by the leadership of the OPCW Technical Secretariat, over the past years, the OPCW has never become our ‘common home’ where the states parties could freely, respectfully and with mutual account for each other's interests engage in dialogue and find solutions to pressing issues.