THE HAGUE, November 28. /TASS/. Russia has refused to finance the activities of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on assigning blame, Russia's Permanent Representative to the OPCW Alexander Shulgin told a press conference on Thursday.

"We are ready to continue to allocate funds for conventional activities, i.e. those that are allowed by the Chemical Weapons Convention," Shulgin said. He added that Russia has already paid its financial contribution "excluding those funds that are allocated for financing the attributive mechanism [on assigning blame]."

Earlier on Thursday, voting was held on approving OPCW's budget for 2020 among member countries in the Chemical Weapons Convention. A total of 106 delegations vote for approving the budget, and 19 others, including Russia, voted against it. Seventeen delegations refused to vote at all, and 11 delegations were absent from the conference at which voting took place.

Shulgin earlier said that Moscow disagreed with the proposal that the budget should incorporate the spending on the organization’s conventional and non-conventional activity. The latter envisages, first and foremost, the operation of the investigation and identification team, which is empowered to name those responsible for the use of chemical weapons.

Russia argues that the decision to empower the OPCW to assign blame made in 2018 is not legitimate and constitutes an encroachment on the exclusive prerogatives of the UN Security Council. Accordingly, Russia wants the budget funds to be spent exclusively on conventional activities, and not used to finance the blame-assigning mechanism. According to Shulgin, unspent funds from the OPCW budget should be returned to member-states in accordance with the organization’s financial regulations.