LONDON/MOSCOW - Twenty three expelled
Russian diplomats and their families left London for Moscow on
Tuesday as Britain and Russia traded recriminations over a nerve
agent attack in England that has plunged relations into their
worst crisis since the Cold War.
Prime Minister Theresa May blamed Russia for the attack on a
Russian double agent and his daughter - the first known
offensive use of a nerve toxin in Europe since World War Two -
and gave 23 Russians whom she said were spies working under
diplomatic cover one week to leave London.
Russia has repeatedly denied any involvement in the attack
on Sergei Skripal and his daughter and, in a reciprocal gesture
on Saturday, gave 23 British diplomats a week to leave Moscow as
well as closing the British Council in Russia.
As May met top officials and advisers on national security,
her spokesman announced new steps to track people coming into
Britain who could be deemed a threat to national security.
This was in line with an announcement by May last Wednesday
that Britain would draw up new legislation to toughen defences
against "hostile state activity".
A state-owned Russian Ilyushin-96 plane, with "Rossiya" and
the white, blue and red of the national flag emblazoned on the
side, made a special flight from Moscow to London's Stansted
airport to pick up the diplomats who were given warm-send off by
Russia's top diplomat in London.
Thanking them on behalf of President Vladimir Putin, who on
Sunday after his re-election repeated that Moscow had played no
part in the attack, ambassador Alexander Yakovenko said: "We are
proud of you."
Russia has refused to explain how Novichok, a nerve agent
first developed by the Soviet military, was used to strike down
Skripal, a former colonel in Russian military intelligence who
betrayed dozens of spies to Britain.
Skripal, 66, and his 33-year-old daughter Yulia have been
critically ill since they were found unconscious on a bench in
the English city of Salisbury on March 4. A British policeman
who was also poisoned is in a serious but stable condition.
Russia says it knows nothing about the poisoning and has
repeatedly asked Britain to supply a sample of the nerve agent
that was used against Skripal.
The United States and European powers say they share
Britain's belief that Russia is culpable for the poisoning
though they have given no indication of what they will do about
it.
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said last week that
it was overwhelmingly likely that Putin himself made the
decision to use the toxin against Skripal.
The two sides continued to exchange accusations over the
affair.
Russian diplomats told the Conference on Disarmament at the
United Nations in Geneva that Britain may have produced the
toxin itself and that Moscow did not owe any explanations.
Britain's ambassador to the forum, Matthew Rowland, said
Russia had given misleading statements on its Novichok
programme.
"Instead of engaging on the substantive concern, Russia has
sought to confuse the picture with at best misleading procedural
arguments," Rowland said. Russia was using "a series of wild
hypotheses and half truth and half lies" to deflect attention
from the truth, he said.
The Russian foreign ministry has invited foreign envoys to a
meeting on March 21 with arms control experts to discuss the
affair, the state-run TASS news agency reported on Tuesday.
SOVIET-ERA SCIENTIST
Putin, who was elected for a fourth term in the Kremlin on
Sunday, said Russia had been falsely accused.
"As for the tragedy that you mentioned, I found out about it
from the media. The first thing that entered my head was that if
it had been a military-grade nerve agent, the people would have
died on the spot," Putin told reporters on Sunday.
"Secondly, Russia does not have such (nerve) agents. We
destroyed all our chemical weapons under the supervision of
international organisations, and we did it first, unlike some of
our partners who promised to do it, but unfortunately did not
keep their promises," Putin said.
A Cold War-era scientist acknowledged on Tuesday he had
helped create the nerve agent, contradicting Moscow's insistence
that neither Russia nor the Soviet Union ever had such a
programme.
However, Professor Leonid Rink told the RIA news agency that
the attack did not look like Moscow's work because Skripal and
his daughter had not died immediately.
"It's hard to believe that the Russians were involved, given
that all of those caught up in the incident are still alive," he
said. "Such outrageous incompetence by the alleged (Russian)
spies would have simply been laughable and unacceptable."
Inspectors from the world's chemical weapons watchdog have
begun examining the poison used in the attack.