By James Simons-
The head of the global chemical-weapons watchdog has rejected Russian claims that traces of a second nerve agent were discovered in the English city where a former Russian spy and his daughter were poisoned last month.
Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said over the weekend that a Swiss laboratory used by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons had discovered traces in the sample of the nerve agent BWZ and its precursors. However, his statement was refuted at the OPCW of the agency today, Wednesday, Director General Ahmet Uzumcu said a BZ precursor contained in the control sample prepared by the OPCW lab in accordance with the existing quality-control procedures.”It has nothing to do with the samples collected by the OPCW team in Salisbury,” Uzumcu added.
Lavrov had cited a report from a lab dated Match 27, stating that the evidence suggested the nerve agent used could be in the arsenal of the United States, Britain, and other countries. He also said the Soviet Union and Russia had never developed the agent.
British representative to the OPCW, Peter Wilson told said that London continued to believe evidence points to Russia’s involvement in the attempted assassination.
‘We believe that only Russia had the technical means, operational experience, and motive to target the Skripals,” he said. This is actually very true. Lavrov’s intense denial of any links to Russia smacks of a blind determination to cover up the source of the nerve agent without irrefutable proof.
In a summary of its report made public last week, The Hague-based OPCW said that its investigators had confirmed Britain’s analysis of the type of toxic chemical used in the poisoning without naming the substance involved.
