Why not examine Pentagon-funded research if it isn’t as benign as Washington says? – Chinese Foreign Ministry
Washington must prove the Pentagon’s global network of biolabs is not conducting nefarious experiments by subjecting them to international inspection, Zhao Lijian (Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson) said Monday during a briefing.
“If the US wants to prove their activity is benign, why not open those biolabs to independent examination by international experts?”He asked.
There are numerous biolabs, funded by the US via the Defense Threat Reduction Agency(DTRA), spread across the globe. These biolabs are used by the US to collect data from potentially harmful infections across different parts of the globe.
China, Russia and other skeptical nations believe that the laboratories may be used for darker purposes, such as conducting bioweapon research on the US’s behalf. The work is allegedly conducted on foreign soil for extra secrecy, and to circumvent Washington’s international commitments to refrain from this type of military research, critics claim.
The network was brought back into the spotlight this month amid Russia’s military attack against Ukraine. Moscow released documents which allegedly proved that Washington instructed labs in Ukraine not to store samples of potentially deadly pathogens. In response, US officials provided a number of explanations.
US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland confirmed under oath that Washington gave instructions to Kiev to destroy lab materials, saying her government was concerned that the research could fall into Russia’s hands.
State Department spokesperson Ned Price rejected Russia’s suspicions that the US and Ukraine were violating the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), which bans bioweapons. He claimed Russia had broken the treaty by conducting active germ warfare research without providing any evidence.
Linda Thomas Greenfield, US Ambassador to UN, stated that Russia called Friday’s UN Security Council meeting and said that America does not support any bioweapons program in Ukraine.
Jen Psaki, White House Press Secretary claimed Wednesday that Russia might be planning a coup. “false flag”To further escalate the conflict, Ukraine is under attack with chemical or biological weapons.
Zhao Lijian claimed that US officials made statements regarding biolabs. “contradictory and confusing,”Beijing has concerns about the uncertainty. He noted that the US was notoriously against attempts to create an international mechanism for certifying compliance by individual countries with the BWC in the 1990s.
The US is still thriving. “for decades”Been “pointing fingers at every turn, accusing other nations of failing to comply with their obligations [on non-development of weapons of mass destruction], demanding they accept verification missions and even imposing sanctions on them,”The spokesperson from the Foreign Ministry said.
Washington sets double standards for international inspections and denies transparency in its own research. He said the US should come clean about what the hundreds of millions of dollars – which it reportedly poured into Ukrainian biolabs – was spent on.
Share this story via social media
[ad_2]
