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TEHRAN, October 05 - Russia's Defense Ministry said Thursday that the United States appeared to be running a clandestine biological weapons lab in the country of Georgia, allegedly flouting international conventions and posing a direct security threat to Russia — allegations the Pentagon angrily rejected.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - The exceptional accusations from Moscow came the same day U.S., British and Dutch officials accused Russian military intelligence of being behind multiple cyberattacks.
Maj. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the head of the Russian military's radiation, chemical and biological protection troops, alleged at a briefing that the lab in Georgia was part of a network of U.S. labs near the borders of Russia and China.
The allegations were based largely on materials about the U.S.-funded Richard G. Lugar Center for Public Health Research in Tbilisi, Georgia. Kirillov claimed the documents released by former Georgian State Security Minister Igor Giorgadze showed the facility was funded entirely by the U.S and the Georgian ownership it has on paper was a cover.
Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon strongly rejected Kirillov's claims, calling them "an invention of the imaginative and false Russian disinformation campaign against the West" and "obvious attempts to divert attention from Russia's bad behavior on many fronts."
"The U.S. is not developing biological weapons in the Lugar Center," Pahon said.
He said the lab, a joint human and veterinary public health facility, was owned and operated by the Georgian National Center for Disease Control and Public Health (NCDC), not the United States.
"The mission of the Lugar Center is to contribute to protection of citizens from biological threats, promote public and animal health through infectious disease detection, epidemiological surveillance, and research for the benefit of Georgia, the Caucasus region and the global community," Pahon said.
The center opened in 2013 and was named for former U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar. Before he left Congress, the Indiana Republican was part of a bipartisan U.S. effort to help secure the Soviet arsenal of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction after the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union.
Russia's Kirillov said the documents published by Giorgadze signaled more sinister activities were happening under the cover of civilian research.
He noted that Giorgadze's materials cited the deaths of 73 volunteers who took part in tests of a new drug at the lab in 2015-2016. The claim couldn't be independently confirmed.
Source: AP
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