MOSCOW, April 29. /TASS/. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) must not become a tool in the hands of some countries to solve their geopolitical tasks, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in a congratulatory message delivered on Friday to OPCW Director General Fernando Arias on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the coming into force of the Chemical Weapons Prohibition Convention (CWC).
"The OPCW should not be transformed to please the conjuncture, it should not be turned into a tool for solving the geopolitical tasks of a well-known group of states seeking to dominate the world," the message reads, "We hope that your professionalism will help you to be impartial and objective in solving specific tasks for strengthening mutual trust, maintaining the integrity of the CWC and the authority of the OPCW."
Lavrov pointed out that Russia, which stood at the origins of the convention, "consistently stands for preserving the integrity of this most important international document and restoring the tradition of consensus decision-making on the OPCW platform," which, he noted, had established itself "as an effective technical structure in the field of chemical disarmament and non-proliferation."
"We have always considered that the OPCW leadership should do its best for realization of corresponding tasks as it did, for example, during the successful program of chemical demilitarization in Syria that was unprecedented in its character and range", the minister recalled.
The Russian Foreign Minister noted that Moscow expects Arias to "fully use his diplomatic experience during his second term in this responsible position in order to restore the spirit of professional depoliticized cooperation and collective response to the real challenges that the international community faces in the field of chemical weapons and non-proliferation of chemical weapons."