BRITAIN HOLDS ‘ TOUGH’ POISON ATTACK TALKS WITH RUSSIA

London, Sept. 27: British foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt said on Thursday he told Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov during “tough” discussions that Moscow would no longer get away with using chemical weapons.

Mr Hunt told Sky News he and the Russian foreign minister had a “frank exchange of views” on the margins of a United Nations summit in New York this week.

The interview aired one day after the Britishbased investigative group Bellingcat reported that one of the suspects in the poisoning in England of former double agent Sergei Skripal was a highly decorated colonel in Russian military intelligence ( GRU).

“It was pretty tough because it is not acceptable for Russia to instruct two GRU agents to use chemical weapons on British soil,” Mr Hunt said.

The discussions marked the first British ministerial contacts with Mr Lavrov since the March incident.

Mr Hunt said the 2006 killing with a radioactive isotope of Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko that Britain also blames on Russia, made Moscow think it could get away with other similar crimes.

“They feel they got away with ( Litvinenko’s murder). That’s why ( British Prime Minister) Theresa May’s reaction this time has been very different,” Mr Hunt said.

Skripal and his daughter Yulia both recovered from the March attack with what Britain says was a Soviet- designed nerve agent called Novichok.

Russia has stiffly denied carrying out either the Litvinenko assassination or the March attack.