MOSCOW, August 4. /TASS/. Washington's use of military-biological developments in Latin American countries has become possible thanks to impunity, Chief of Russian Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Force Igor Kirillov said on Thursday.
"<...> Impunity has contributed to further use of military and biological weapons by Washington in Latin America, including for the elimination of undesirable political figures," Kirillov said, referring to documentary evidence of US use of biological weapons in Cuba.
In particular, Kirillov described the deliberate spread of dengue, African swine fever and economically important crop diseases on Cuban territory.
As an example, he recalled that in 1997 the Cuban government brought to the attention of the global community the fact that the US had violated the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC). The charges were based on the testimony of a Cuban pilot who documented an American plane spraying a biological agent, palm thrips, that could harm one of Cuba's key agricultural industries.
Kirillov stressed that although Russia had managed to initiate an extraordinary meeting of the BWC member states on the issue, the incident had not been investigated due to the absence of the convention control mechanism that Russia had been insisting on establishing.