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South Ossetian leader reiterates concerns over biological labs in Georgia

According to Russian military, US had launched a vast military-biological program in the territories of several countries neighboring Russia

© Anton Novoderezhkin/TASS

MOSCOW, November 15. /TASS/. Possible emergence of new biological laboratories in Georgia is a bigger concern for South Ossetia than the construction of a military airfield in Georgia’s Vaziani under NATO’s auspices, republic’s President Anatoly Bibilov told a news conference on Thursday.

An agreement to build an airfield in Vaziani outside Tbilisi was reached when Georgian Defense Minister Levan Izoria met with General Stephen Lyons, commander of U.S. Transportation Command.

"We are strongly concerned about the construction of the airfield, but we are even more concerned about the spread of the diseases that we relate to these [Georgian] laboratories. One lab is functioning near the borders of South Ossetia and several more are planned," he said, pointing to cattle diseases of uncertain origin that have been registered in South Ossetia all of a sudden.

The activity of the Richard Lugar Public Health Research Center near Georgia’s capital Tbilisi poses a threat to security of South Ossetia, republic’s Deputy Defense Minister Vadim Siukayev told reporters on October 11.

Earlier, Chief of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops Major General Igor Kirillov stated that the US had launched a vast military-biological program in the territories of several countries neighboring Russia. He added that the Defense Ministry’s specialists had scrutinized materials made public by Georgia’s former state security minister, Igor Giorgadze, about US activities underway at the Richard Lugar Public Health Research Center in Alekseyevka.

The specialists discovered that this laboratory is just a small part of the biological program of the US military, and that the US had launched large-scale activities in the territories of states neighboring Russia, where Pentagon-controlled laboratories are functioning.

The South Ossetian senior military said the biological laboratory triggered specific concerns in Russia and South Ossetia. "Located in the direct vicinity of the South Ossetian border, the Lugar lab poses a threat to health of individuals, as well as to security of the state in general," he said.

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