Moscow offer of joint investigation voted down at watchdog meeting

THE HAGUE, Netherlands－Russia has called for urgent UN Security Council talks on the spiraling diplomatic crisis sparked by the spy poisoning scandal as a group of expelled US diplomats left their embassy in Moscow early on Thursday.

Britain blames Russia for the March 4 poisoning on UK soil of former double agent Sergei Skripal with what it says was a military-grade nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union.

More than 150 Russian diplomats were ordered out of the United States, European Union members, NATO countries and other nations in the wake of the attack, a move that was met in kind by Russia, which denies any involvement in the incident.

Moscow proposed a joint Russia-Britain investigation into the poisoning, leading the Executive Council of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons watchdog to hold an extraordinary session behind closed doors on Wednesday.

Both Russian and British experts and officials attended the session.

Out of the 41-member OPCW Executive Council, a total of 23 countries either voted in favor of the proposal or abstained.

"Unfortunately we have not been able to have two-thirds of the votes in support of that decision," said Alexander Shulgin, the permanent representative of the Russian Federation at the OPCW.

After the vote, the British delegation tweeted that "the international community has again stood up and said 'No' to Russian attempts to confuse and frustrate this process".

John Foggo, who is acting as British permanent representative to the OPCW, told the session that Russia's call for a joint inquiry with Britain was "perverse" and "a diversionary act".

Russian foreign intelligence chief Sergei Naryshkin warned on Wednesday in a speech in Moscow that both sides must avoid tensions escalating to the dangerous levels of the Cold War.

Accusations of Moscow engineering the attack were a "grotesque provocation ... crudely concocted by the British and American security services", he said.

For Washington, "fighting the nonexistent so-called Russian threat has become a real fixation", Naryshkin added.

"It has reached such proportions and developed such ludicrous characteristics, that it's time to talk about the return of the grim times of the Cold War."

London believes that a military-grade nerve substance named Novichok that was developed in Soviet times was used in the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter on March 4 in the southern English city of Salisbury, an allegation Moscow denies.

The OPCW experts have visited the locations and collected environmental samples. The samples were brought to the OPCW laboratory on March 23.

"The results of the sample analyses are expected to be received by early next week," said the OPCW in a statement.

But in a move hailed as a vindication by Moscow, the British defense laboratory at Porton Down analyzing the nerve agent revealed on Tuesday that it could not say whether the substance came from Russia.

Early on Thursday morning the first of around 60 US diplomats ordered out of Russia left their embassy compound in Moscow on their way to the airport.

XINHUA/AFP