MOSOCW. Aug 24 (Interfax) - Moscow has denied the claim of the United States Department of State's spokesperson Heather Nauert that State Secretary Mike Pompeo asked Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov by phone to support the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons' (OPCW) attempts to hold Damascus responsible for the use of chemical weapons in Syria.
"Yet again, we have to point out the American side's loose interpretation of the contents of communications between high-ranking Russian and U.S. representatives. Nauert's remarks are untrue, Pompeo made no such request," the Russian Foreign Ministry's spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in a statement on the ministry's website.
"We see this distorted synopsis of the conversation between the Russian and U.S. foreign-policy heads as an attempt by Washington to use bilateral dialogue on the Syrian conflict to advance its own political agenda, both on Syria and more broadly within the OPCW," the spokesperson said.