Beijing (Dispatches) - Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian, at a regular press briefing on Wednesday said that the biological military activities in Ukraine are the common concern of the international community, and the United States should act responsibly and provide a thorough clarification regarding its biological military activities.
Zhao made the remarks in response to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s claims that there are hundreds of military biological laboratories, including almost 30 just in Ukraine alone, CGTN reported.
And many were set up in a number of former Soviet countries precisely along the perimeter of Russia’s borders, as well as on China’s borders, and on the borders of the other countries located there, posing life-threatening dangers to a huge number of civilians.
We welcome the joint assessment by the international community of the documents disclosed by Russia under the framework of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and the United Nations, and we also welcome clarifications from the U.S. side, Zhao said.
It also will be an opportunity for the international community to restart the negotiation for a protocol that includes a verification mechanism to strengthen the BWC, he added.
“This will help restore the international community’s confidence in the U.S. fulfillment of its international obligations and strengthen global biosecurity,” he said.
He also refuted the U.S. criticism of big countries bullying small countries, saying that what the United States has done to Cuba, Panama and other countries are typical examples of bullying.
Zhao made the remarks at a regular press briefing when asked to comment on U.S. State Department spokesperson’s statement that “the basic tenet that big countries cannot bully small countries” has been violated in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Xinhua news agency reported.
Zhao said that U.S. actions against Cuba, Panama, Grenada, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya have been universally recognized as textbook examples of big countries bullying small countries.
The fundamental way to resolve the Ukraine crisis lies in ceasefire, followed by dialogue and negotiation, rather than “rules-based order” unilaterally defined according to one’s own standards, still less coercing others to pick sides, the spokesperson said.
“The world needs peace, not war; it calls for justice, not hegemony; it aspires for cooperation, not confrontation. This is what the vast majority of countries in the world are hoping for,” Zhao said.
There is only one system in the world -- the international system with the United Nations at its core, Zhao said. There is only one order -- the international order based on international law. And there is only one set of rules -- the basic norms governing international relations based on the purposes and principles of the UN Charter.