MOSCOW, April 6. /TASS/. Over $5 billion have been poured in the military biological programs of US contractors in the past 17 years, Chief of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops Igor Kirillov said on Wednesday.
"The total amount of financing [US] contractors has exceeded five billion dollars since 2005," Kirillov told an Arria formula meeting of the UN Security Council looking into the threats coming from US biolabs round the world.
According to him, taking part in these programs are the US Department of Defense, the Agency for International Development, the Open Society Foundation of George Soros and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention among others.
The main contractors of the Pentagon are Metabiota, Black and Veatch, CH2M Hill that build bio facilities, supply equipment for Pentagon’s biolabs across the world. "The scientific oversight is carried out by leading research centers, including the Los Alamos National Laboratory that developed nuclear weapons as part of the Manhattan Project. The leading role belongs to the US Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center," he added.
Lugar Center in Georgia
The most significant elements of the bio network across the world are the facilities in Georgia and Ukraine, Kirillov went on to say.
"In Georgia, this is the Lugar Center for Public Health Research that has been functioning since 2011," he added. In particular, the disquieting fact is that two stories of the building are fully allocated for US ground forces, and there are separate areas inside to work with patients infected with pathogens of especially dangerous infections. However, the center does not look like an antiplague laboratory," he stressed.
The area of the zoned premises is exceeded at the facility 16 times (from 500 to 8,000 square meters), the number of the personnel at the center - four times (from 50 to 200 people) and the number of the studied pathogens of dangerous infectious diseases - twofold (from 14 to 31), Kirillov noted.
Georgian specialists from the Lugar Center have no information about secret research work of the Pentagon there, Igor Kirillov told an Arria formula meeting of the UN Security Council looking into the threats coming from US biolabs round the world.
"I would like to note that Georgian specialists are restricted in their movement in the Center, they have no access to American documents. This is done under the pretext of US legislative restrictions on access to secret programs and high-security facilities," Kirillov said.
"It is not surprising that the Georgian staff of the Lugar Center have no information about the Pentagon’s secret research work of the Pentagon at the laboratory," he added.