Russia and Britain trade barbs over poison probe

RUSSIA and Britain faced off yesterday trading accusations at a tense meeting of the world’s chemical weapons watchdog, as Moscow accused British and US secret services of being behind the poisoning of a Russian former double agent.

London slammed as perverse a Russian proposal for a joint probe into the poisoning of ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia with a nerve agent, dismissing it as a diversionary tactic.

But Russian officials hit back that accusations of Moscow engineering the attack were a “grotesque provocation crudely concocted by the British and American security services”.

British authorities say the Skripals were poisoned with the Soviet-designed nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury on March 4, and that it is highly likely Moscow was behind it.

At a closed-door meeting of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague, convened at the request of Moscow, Russia insisted it was ready to cooperate.

“We consider this is necessary to ensure that this problem is solved within the [international] legal framework,” the Russian embassy to the Netherlands said in a tweet.

It said that it had won backing from 14 other countries on the OPCW’s governing executive council and its statement was supported by solid facts by experts in this field.

But the British delegation to the OPCW said “Russia’s proposal for a joint, UK/Russian investigation into the Salisbury incident is perverse. It is a diversionary tactic.”

Moscow was seeking to evade the questions the Russian authorities must answer, it said in a tweet.– AFP