NATO agrees nerve agent used to try to kill Russia's Navalny
BRUSSELS— NATO Secretary- General Jens S to lt en berg on Friday condemned the “appalling assassination attempt” on Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny and called on Moscow to answer questions about the poisoning to international investigators.
Navalny,a Kremlin critic and corruption investigator, fell ill on a flight to Moscow on Aug. 20 and was taken to a hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk. He has been in an induced coma in a Berlin hospital since he was fl own to Germany for treatment more than a week ago.
German authorities have said that tests showed that he had been poisoned with a chemical nerve agent from the Novichok group. British authorities previously identified the Soviet-era Novichok as the poison used on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England in 2018.
“There is proof beyond doubt that Mr. Navalny was poisoned using a military-grade nerve agent from the Novichok group. The use of such a weapon is horrific,” Stoltenberg said after chairing a meeting of NATO ambassadors during which Germany briefed its allies on developments.
“Any use of chemical weapons shows a total disrespect for human lives and is an unacceptable breach of international norms and rules. NATO allies agree that Russia now has serious questions it must answer,” he told reporters.
S to lt en berg said Moscow must coopera te with the international chemical weapons organization in “an impartial, international investigation” and provide information about its Novichok program.
On Friday evening, state television in Belarus released what it claimed to be the recording of an intercepted telephone call of German and Polish representatives suggesting the German allegation of poisoning was fake.
In the English-language recording, overdubbed in Russian, a purported German official identified only as“Nick” says a report on the case is being prepared to be sent to German Chancellor Angela Merkel.T he purported Pole asks if the report confirms poisoning.
“Listen, Mike, in this case that's not so important. There's a war going on, and in war all methods are good ,” Nick replies. The other man says Russian President Vladimir Putin must be discouraged from interfering in Belarus and that “the most effective way is to drown him in the problems of Russia.”
Belarus has been shaken for the past four weeks by wide- scale calls for the resignation of authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko in the wake of an allegedly fraudulent election that gave him a sixth term in office.
After the March 2018 attack on the Skripals in the English city of Salisbury — territory of a member of the 30-nation alliance — NATO withdrew the accreditation of seven staff members at Russia's mission to the military alliance and rejected the applications of three others. No such action was announced Friday.