"A group of Western countries has done their utmost to not agree on the final document of the Review Conference," Russia’s Permanent Representative to OPCW Alexander Shulgin told TASS on Friday.
"As a matter of fact, they ‘killed’ the draft by suggesting, at the very last moment, wordings that are absolutely unacceptable for a big number of states, including us, due to principled considerations,” he added.
"Russia, along with China, Iran, Syria and its CSTO [Collective Security Treaty Organization] partners firmly repelled all the attacks of our opponents," Shulgin stressed. "We cited concrete examples to demonstrate how selective the Americans are in the provisions of the Chemical Weapons Convention, that they violate its norms pretty often. Notably, nowadays they are the only country which has considerable chemical arsenals that have not yet been destroyed. Moreover, they are holding back on it until 2023, despite the fact that they have necessary financial, technological and human resources."
"We stressed that the United States continues efforts to factionalize the organization," TASS quoted him as saying. "They care little both about two-way diplomacy and opinion of other players. They want the OPCW to be a manageable instrument to resolve the tasks they want. The Americans have turned into repeated violators of international law, substituting it with the rules they invent."
He further maintained that the conference has demonstrated that the OPCW is now in a “profound crisis”, adding that “the responsibility for it rests on those who, being guided by politically motivated considerations, continue to whip up tensions within the OPCW.”
MNA/TASS
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