Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova expressed concern on Thursday that the Incident and Trafficking Database (ITDB) of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) can be used for politically motivated media campaigns.
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 04th October, 2018) Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova expressed concern on Thursday that the Incident and Trafficking Database (ITDB) of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) can be used for politically motivated media campaigns.
In September, Christopher Ford, the chief of the US Department of State's nonproliferation bureau, said that the database was "at risk of being undermined by Russia as a result of embarrassment" over the inclusion of information on radioactive polonium allegedly used by Moscow in 2006 to kill former double spy Alexander Litvinenko.
"I would like to express regret that Mister Ford has revealed the database information, which is, strictly speaking, confidential and available only for internal reference by the IAEA member states," Zakharova said at a briefing.
Since the IAEA Secretariat is not responsible for the member states' initiatives on including certain information on the database, "it is a useful tool for irresponsible media campaigns and ... political confrontations, as has been well demonstrated when the United Kingdom placed information on the Litvinenko case on the database," Zakharova said.
The database can not be used to draw any analytic conclusions, as there are no means to defend oneself against its "political bias," the spokeswoman said.
In 2000, Litvinenko, a former Russian security officer working for London, defected to the United Kingdom and six years later died there from what doctors explained was radiation poisoning. According to the UK investigators, the Russian authorities deliberately poisoned him with polonium-210. The investigation, however, failed to prove that the polonium-210 used to poison the former intelligence officer came from Russia. Moscow has dismissed the claims and said that the probe was biased and lacked transparency.
The Incident and Trafficking Database lists incidents of illicit trafficking and other incidents of unauthorized use of nuclear substances.
