MOSCOW, March 15./TASS/. The activity of American biological laboratories is replete with life-threatening dangers to a huge number of civilians, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a news conference after talks with his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.
"I am confident that the global community has fully realized and is yet to fully realize the inadmissibility of such activities which are actually chock-full of deadly threats to a huge number of civilians," Lavrov said.
According to him, the unearthed facts show the colossal scope of the US illegitimate activity to spread its military biological laboratories across the world. "There are hundreds of such laboratories, including almost 30 just in Ukraine alone. And many were set up in a number of former Soviet countries precisely along the perimeter of Russia’s borders, as well as on China’s borders, and on the borders of the other countries located there," he stressed.
"We will demand, in this situation, that first this problem be considered within the context of the commitments for all countries participating in the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. Secondly, we will double and triple our efforts to make the Americans stop blocking our proposal submitted 20 years ago, about the need to establish a special verification mechanism under this convention for any alarming reports that there are agents out there that can be used to make biological weapons," he noted.
The US is against this mechanism, since it will ensure the transparency of any biological activity, the top diplomat stressed. "The Americans don’t want to see this transparency, since it is more convenient for them to do everything under their control, which is what they are still doing," Lavrov stressed.
Earlier, Chief of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops Igor Kirillov informed that a network of over 30 biological laboratories was set up in Ukraine, contracted by the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). According to Kirillov, on February 24, all these laboratories received an order from the Ukrainian Health Ministry to completely dispose of the biological agents stockpiled in those laboratories.