South Ossetia is concerned about the work of the Richard Lugar Public Health Research Center in Georgia, which is located near the Georgian-South Ossetian border, and hopes that Russian experts will be allowed to monitor the laboratory, South Ossetian Foreign Minister Dmitry Medoev told TASS on Wednesday.
The Russian Foreign Ministry reported on Tuesday that Russia was awaiting a response from Georgia to a request to visit the Richard Lugar Public Health Research Center by Russian experts, saying that Moscow was concerned about the lack of information on the activities of this laboratory.
"We have been talking for a long time about the danger that this American military-biological object poses to the Transcaucasian countries, and first of all to Georgia itself. As you know, the United States does not provide information about dual-use activities carried out there, which was discussed in detail at a press conference by former Georgian security General Igor Giorgadze," Medoev said.
According to a Speaker of the South Ossetian Parliament Alan Tadtaev, it is important for South Ossetia that it is the Russian specialists who are allowed to monitor the Lugar bio-laboratory. "If the appeal of the Russian side is understood by the Georgian government and Russian experts are allowed to monitor this laboratory, we will already know what is happening there, what types of laboratory tests are being carried out at the center, and as long as there is such ambiguity on the center’s activities, a certain concern is being created with the work of the laboratory in close proximity to our border, ”Tadtaev said.
He has noted that neither South Ossetia nor Russia possess reliable information about what the Lugar center is currently doing. "The South Ossetian side has questions, in particular, why Russian observers are not allowed there so that they can monitor the work of this laboratory and draw certain conclusions. We have very big fears that provocations against South Ossetia might be prepared there, and we have some concerns about this," Tadtayev said.
The Richard Lugar Public Health Research Center was opened in 2011 under the US government program. The center is engaged in the study of biological threats. Former Georgian Minister of State Security Igor Giorgadze at the end of 2018 said that he had documents confirming that the research center had conducted dangerous experiments, and also urged the U.S. President Donald Trump to investigate the laboratory. In Moscow, they said they would ask the United States for documents on the activities of the laboratory.
The authorities of South Ossetia have repeatedly expressed their concern about the activities of the US biolaboratory in Georgia, located in close proximity to the border of the Republic, which is dangerous because no one understands what is being researched or produced there.
