Lavrov: the Skripals case is bullying international law

The so-called Skripals case is a cover-up for groundless expulsion of Russian diplomats not only from the USA and Great Britain, but a number of other countries most of which were pressed to do it, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has announced at the 7^th Moscow Conference on International Security.

“It has been a long time since we last saw such open mockery of international law, diplomatic ethics and elementary decency. I would like to say that, although we will continue to provide appropriate responses to these unfriendly actions, what we do want is to establish the truth. We demand that a substantive and responsible investigation be held in keeping with the provisions of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). The legitimate questions we have asked on the basis of CWC will have to be answered, as the special session of the OPCW’s Executive Council on April 4, which was initiated by Russia, has shown,” the minister noted.

He called inadmissible that as regards the incident in Salisbury and other situations (from the US election campaign to the chemical weapons attack in Syria and the referendum in Catalonia), instead of certain facts, instead of a fair investigation, groundless accusations are presented.

“It is only in the famous book by Lewis Carroll that the Queen could demand, “Sentence first – verdict afterwards.” But Lewis Carroll’s book only looks like a fairy-tale for children while in fact it is a political satire. The discussion held in The Hague yesterday has shown that adult and self-respecting people do not believe in fairy-tales. We again urge our colleagues to deal with any problems within the framework of international law, honestly, and with hard facts,” Lavrov said.