NATO PA committee condemns nerve agent attack in UK

TALLINN - The Standing Committee of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly at Saturday's meeting in Vilnius unanimously adopted a declaration, in which it condemned the March 4 military grade nerve agent attack in the UK which was likely connected to Russia.

The Standing Committee expressed its solidarity with the United Kingdom and condemned the heinous and unprovoked attack, the first offensive use of a nerve agent on alliance territory and a clear violation of international norms and laws.

According to head of the Estonian delegation Marko Mihkelson, it is very important that the declaration clearly states that Russia was connected to the attack.

He also deemed important that the statement called on Russia to fully cooperate with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) which is investigating the case.

"Russia's aggressive anti-West behavior, which is expressed in basically continuing the Cold War, is completely unacceptable. The West should take that into consideration and expand its joint pressure politics, which would mainly expand to restricting Russia's strategic economic interests. Simply interfering with the intelligence network and implementing the Magnitsky list is not enough to pressure Russia to end the Cold War against the West," Mihkelson said.