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Russian experts will visit Lugar Center in Tbilisi — Russian deputy foreign minister

The Richard Lugar Public Health Research Center opened in Alekseyevka near Tbilisi’s international airport in 2011 under a US government program

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin Mikhail Tereshchenko/TASS

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin

© Mikhail Tereshchenko/TASS

TBILISI, June 14. /TASS/. Russian experts will visit the Richard Lugar Public Health Research Center in Tbilisi and examine its operations, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin told Imedi TV channel after talks with Georgian prime minister's special envoy for relations with Russia Zurab Abashidze in Prague.

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"At today's meeting I thanked the Georgian side for the offer to our experts to visit the Lugar lab. We think that it will be very good. This is right and welcome but we agreed that before experts come to Georgia, we need to meet and coordinate the details, for example, what experts will examine in the Lugar lab," Karasin said. He did not specify the date for Russian experts' visit to the lab.

Abashidze in turn reminded about statements on experiments conducted at the Lugar laboratory and noted that this is the reason Georgia is allowing Russian experts to visit the research center.

The Richard Lugar Public Health Research Center opened in Alekseyevka near Tbilisi’s international airport in 2011 under a US government program. The Center conducts research into biological threats.

At the end of 2018, Georgia's former minister of state security Igor Giorgadze said that he had evidence confirming that the Richard Lugar Public Health Research Center carried out dangerous experiments and called on US President Donald Trump to investigate the laboratory’s activity. Giorgadze claimed that US military and private contractors could be engaged in secret experiments there.

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