MOSCOW, May 28./TASS/: Following his talks with Tbilisi, Russian envoy Grigory Karasin said on Thursday that he was set to discuss in any format a visit by Russian experts to the Georgia-based Richard Lugar Center for Public Health Research with Georgian prime minister’s special envoy for Russia Zurab Abashidze.
"We deliberated over this issue with him earlier, but so far no new request has come. When it arrives, we’ll let you know. As for the format - if we agree to an online arrangement, than we will have it online, if we opt for a phone conversation, then we will discuss this over the phone," Karasin told TASS.
Earlier, Abashidze signaled that he was ready to discuss a visit by Russian experts at the Prague-format negotiations. The Russian envoy told TASS on Wednesday that it would be held possibly in July or August.
Likewise on Wednesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a comment, saying that Russian specialists should have access to all facilities of the Richard Lugar Center when visiting the lab.
The Russian diplomatic agency noted that the mechanism of ‘voluntary assessment visits’ of the dual-purpose microbiology lab advanced by certain Western countries had nothing to do with the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction.
Richard Lugar Center
Russia has repeatedly raised alarm bells over the work of the Georgia-based Richard Lugar Center for Public Health Research. Opened near Tbilisi’s international airport in 2011 under a US governmental program, the center specializes in the study of biological threats. Georgia’s former State Security Minister Igor Giorgadze told reporters in late 2018 that he had evidence confirming that the lab was carrying out dangerous experiments and called on US President Donald Trump to investigate the facility’s activities. Giorgadze claimed that US military and private contractors could be engaged in secret experiments on humans there. Georgia dismissed these allegations as absurd while Moscow said it would request documents related to the lab from the United States.
