A special envoy for Russia ties at the Georgian cabinet on Thursday denied US role in running a sensitive biosafety lab in the former Soviet republic, after a senior Russian military official said it had tested pathogens on unsuspecting victims.
TBILISI (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 05th October, 2018) A special envoy for Russia ties at the Georgian cabinet on Thursday denied US role in running a sensitive biosafety lab in the former Soviet republic, after a senior Russian military official said it had tested pathogens on unsuspecting victims.
"This is becoming more and more absurd. We have repeatedly said this was not an American lab. Its management and financing are fully controlled by the Georgian government. It employs Georgian scientists and is visited by experts and journalists from all over the world," Zurab Abashidze told Sputnik.
Russia is using the R. Lugar Center for Public Health Research in Tbilisi in its standoff with the West, he claimed. The commander of Russia's radiological, chemical and biological defense troops, Maj. Gen. Igor Kirillov, said US scientists at the Lugar Center used a toxic substance on Georgians, killing dozens.
According to Georgia's center for disease control, the facility in Tbilisi was set up in the wake of US-Georgia agreements on non-proliferation of biological weapons. The Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency helped renovate the biosafety labs and invested in personnel training.
The US Embassy in Georgia said last year that the DTRA deputy director, Scott Jerabek, praised successful collaboration between the Pentagon agency and Georgia's biosafety regulator and outlined his vision for further development of the Lugar Center.
