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8203rd Security Council Meeting: Letter from United Kingdom
The Security Council met today to discuss a letter written by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to the President of the Security Council, which outlined a nerve-agent attack against Sergei Skripal and his daughter that had left them both in critical condition.
In the letter dated 13 March from the Charge d’Affaires a.i. of the Permanent Mission of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the United Nations addressed to the President of the Security Council, Theresa May noted that the police had conducted a thorough investigation, and her Government believed that it was “highly likely” the Russian Federation was responsible for the attack.
The representative of the United Kingdom, outlining the events of 4 March, said that Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal had been found in the centre of Salisbury, “slipping in and out of consciousness”. According to investigations by experts accredited by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), they had been exposed to the nerve agent Novichok. That agent, he noted, was a military‑grade weapon of the type developed by the Soviet Union. As the Russian Federation had a track record of conducting State‑sponsored assassinations, including that of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006, his Government had concluded that either the attack was carried out by Moscow or that it had lost control over the use of the nerve agent.
When his Government notified OPCW that a chemical attack had taken place, the Russian Federation had argued that the United Kingdom was not abiding by article 9 of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction. But it was the Russian Federation that was not complying, he said. Moscow had completed its destruction of its declared stockpile of chemical weapons in 2017, but had not declared Novichok agents or production facilities.
The Russian Federation’s delegate emphasized that the letter from the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom not only contained irresponsible statements but also threatened a sovereign State. That communication had further noted that the Russian Federation had something to do with the use of toxic agents in Salisbury and had given Moscow 24 hours to admit to the crime. His country, he said, did not speak the language of ultimatums.
There was no scientific research or development of Novichok being carried out by Moscow, he said. In 1992 in the Russian Federation, Soviet developmental work had been stopped, and in 2017 it had completed the destruction of all existing stocks of chemical weapons. The most probable source of the nerve agent would be a country that had carried out research on those weapons, including the United Kingdom. He underscored that there were many countries the incident could benefit, but the Russian Federation was not one of them. The man who had been attacked was no threat to Moscow, but he was a perfect victim that could justify any kind of dirt to tarnish Russia.
The delegate of the United States underscored it was her belief that the Russian Federation was responsible for the attack, linking it to an alarming increase in the global use of chemical weapons. She highlighted that the Bashar al‑Assad regime in Syria was continuing to kill its own people using such weapons. The Russian Federation had worked to shield Assad by ending the Joint Investigative Mechanism that had been set up to examine the use of such weapons. She warned that if measures were not taken regarding the attack in Salisbury, then it would be followed by others in places like New York, or in the cities of any Council member.
Echoing those sentiments, the representative of France said that the re‑emergence of chemical weapons had been seen in Syria, as well as in other areas of the Middle East and Asia, and that fact could not be tolerated. Its use undermined the international non‑proliferation architecture that had been established, he said. On the attack in Salisbury, he emphasized that his country would never accept impunity for those who used or developed toxic agents.
The representative of Kazakhstan, while noting that his country believed that all weapons of mass destruction were immoral and contrary to the principles of humanity, urged the Council to exercise caution when drawing conclusions regarding the Salisbury attack. The issue was politically sensitive, he noted, and credible and convincing facts from the ground should be examined. Both the United Kingdom and the Russian Federation should be able to resolve the dispute between them for the benefit of global stability, he said.
Also speaking were the representatives of Kuwait, Equatorial Guinea, Poland, Peru, Sweden, Côte d’Ivoire, Bolivia, Ethiopia, China and the Netherlands.
The meeting began at 3:24 p.m. and ended at 4:32 p.m.
