UNITED NATIONS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 28th May, 2022) The United Nations Secretariat has no mandate to analyze the activities of member states of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarrick told reporters on Friday.
"The Secretariat does not have the mandate to analyze the content," Dujarrick said when asked to comment on Russia's allegations that the United States and Ukraine did not notify the United Nations of their biological activities.
Earlier on Friday, the Russian Defense Ministry published a 2017 document from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) that noted the epidemiological threat of the US military biological program in Ukraine.
The chief of the Russian military's radiation, chemical and biological defense Irog Kirillov said that both Washington and Kiev did not indicate in their reports to the United Nations about their biological research that they engaged in joint work.
Dujarrick said BWC's Confidence-Building Measures (CBM) system requires all parties to provide information on certain activities and relevant facilities on an annual basis.
"The types of activities and facilities on which information should be provided is clearly outlined in the CBM forms and activities and facilities falling outside these specifications do not need to be reported," Dujarric said.
Ukraine and the United States make their annual CBM reports available publicly, he added.
